ICE's Network of Internment Camps

by Barbara Jatkola, Keene Sentinel 2/19 Your Letters

The Trump administration is planning to build a network of what it euphemistically calls “immigrant processing and detention centers” throughout the country. But let’s call them what they are: internment camps or, worse, concentration camps.

Right now in New Hampshire, ICE has possibly already purchased a warehouse in Merrimack to use as a “processing center.” For weeks, Governor Kelly Ayotte claimed that she knew nothing about the project, despite the fact that acting ICE director Todd Lyons told Congress last week that ICE had been in communication with her. Soon after his testimony, Ayotte sent the town ICE’s economic analysis of the site, which laughably described “all ripple effects to the Oklahoma economy.”

Monday night on The Rachel Maddow Show, state representative Wendy Thomas said that the warehouse has already been sold to an unidentified buyer. She also said that the former owner of the warehouse is a financial supporter of Governor Ayotte.

Maddow recently observed, “If they build them, they will fill them up.” In light of that terrifying prospect, states such as Texas, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Missouri have successfully blocked immigrant camps in their states. Will New Hampshire follow suit?

Meanwhile, more than 70,000 people are being held indefinitely in ICE facilities, without legal recourse or communication with the outside. Members of Congress, who have the legal right to visit these facilities, have been prevented from doing so. Conditions reported by former detainees and others are horrific, with inadequate medical care, tainted food and water, and overcrowded cells.

ICE is in the process of converting other warehouses into “processing centers,” reopening shuttered prisons, and engaging private contractors to build new internment camps, all of which could, according to border czar Tom Homan, accommodate at least 100,000 people.

Many of these facilities are and will be run by private contractors, who view this as a moneymaking proposition. Lyons has said, “We need to get better at treating this like a business, describing his ideal deportation process as “like Prime, but with human beings.”

The Pentagon has accordingly granted ICE access to a program that will allow it to bypass competitive bidding with contractors and expedite the construction process.

In 1988, the U.S. government officially apologized for the World War II internment of Japanese Americans through an act signed by Ronald Reagan. How can we possibly be going down that disastrous road again?