Liberty is dead. In the last two months, the federal government has kidnapped hundreds of people and sent them to a foreign prison to serve an indefinite sentence even though they were never charged with a crime.
I have seen these kidnappings referred to as “deportations,” but using that language lends an air of legality that the feds do not deserve. These kidnappings don’t follow settled United States law on deportations or anything else. At no point has the Trump administration offered legal justification for giving these individuals a life sentence in a foreign prison — something the United States has never done before.
To anyone who questions them, the feds repeat until they are blue in the face that these men are “illegal alien terrorist gang members.” That’s a nice combination of scary words, but since when did the land of liberty hand out life sentences just because some feds say a magic incantation of scary words? This administration is testing the American people to see if we will let them use the Constitution as toilet paper.
So far it seems that millions of my fellow Americans are content to shrug it off and see no issue with giving a life sentence to individuals who have never been charged with a crime — so long as those individuals are brown-skinned and the prison is in another country. I understand folks may be tired of hearing politicians called Nazis or fascists, but what else do you call this?
David Fure
Juneau