 |
| Japanese internment camp in the US |
The story is still unfolding regarding the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members to prisons in El Salvador, despite a federal court judge's order to stop the deportation, even to the extent of turning the planes around. Though the Chaos administration claims these people were outside the US by the time the order was given, the White House press secretary and others are asserting that the judge has no jurisdiction. King Chaos invoked a 1798 law previously used a few times during a war, including the rationale for the infamous Japanese-American internment camps during World War II (and lest it be forgotten, at least one Italian internment camp.)
This is the most blatant act of defiance of a court order so far. But there have been others, especially relating to border issues. Though no evidence has been presented that any or all of the deported and now imprisoned people were gang members, there is at least the appearance of eliminating danger. Not so in the case of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a medical specialist in the crucial area of kidney transplants, and a Brown University medical school professor. On returning from a visit to family in Lebanon, she presented her valid visa and was detained, and then later put on a plane to Paris presumably to connect with a flight to Lebanon. In other words, she was expelled, even though the US Customs and Border Protection officials who held her were informed that there was a federal court order to prevent her immediate deportation, and to provide 48 hours notice of their intentions.
Later the judge who issued the order said from the bench that there was reason to believe his order was willfully disobeyed. Again, a case of open defiance of the rule of law.
Except for the timely court orders, these are not isolated incidents. There's a story on the Internet about a Canadian woman attempting to renew her work visa at the southern border who was summarily dumped into a privately run prison and left there in primitive and unsanitary conditions. She encountered other women there who had no idea why they were being held, or even where they were.
There are many other reports of harassment at the northern border as well, including of Canadian citizens. What a lot of these incidents have in common is people being jailed without being charged before a court, without access to attorneys, perhaps transported to a prison far away if not summarily deported.
Given other circumstances, Canadians are not eager to travel to the US anyway, but this alone makes that dangerous. It is dangerous as well for anyone to attempt to leave the country. Brown University has already advised its employees to avoid foreign travel. But even that may not be enough. There are several reported and documented instances of US residents clearly on the legal path to citizenship being stopped at airports from domestic flights, detained and imprisoned.
When the government uses arbitrary and unchecked power with impunity, eventually no one is safe. The United States is now a de facto prison run by lawless authoritarian thugs.
 |
