US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem traveled to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador and published this video about it. It has one hell of a dystopian optic!
“I want everybody to know, if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face… This facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people,” she said.
She is standing in front of tattooed gang members, presumably bad dudes. But are we sure? Did these people have due process? We were told that they were the worst of the worst but we were told that about the people in Guantanamo Bay too and that turned out to be a lie. The American people should not be unwitting participants in another Guantanamo Bay.
The Trump administration is also fighting to deport university students who protested on behalf of Palestinians. A Turkish woman at Tufts University was detained because the government says that she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” New video shows her being approached by non-uniformed people in masks and put in an unmarked van. The government is still fighting to deport Mahmoud Khalil on slim evidence.
The point is: The U.S. government is arresting people for speech violations. The U.S. government tortured innocent people in Guantanamo Bay without due process. Are we being asked to cheer for the punishment of tattooed banditos to hide these facts or is this exactly what it seems? When is anything in politics ever exactly as it seems?
