It is one of the everlasting quirks of humankind’s time on this earth that many of the bad ones, the ones who are responsible for the deaths and misery of millions, are not big, famous, showy generals, or the elected or unelected leaders of nations, but rather milktoasty little functionaries who sit at desks and execute their ugly, murderous plans out of sight of the public. They are not elected to office. They don’t earn rank during long military careers and time in battle. They are, evermore, contemptible miscreants like Stephen Miller, little people who are given power because their morals match the lying, heartless, fascist men who appoint them.
Miller went on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” and told slavering host Maria Bartiromo that on Inauguration Day, his master, Donald Trump, plans to “issue a series of executive orders that seal the border shut and begin the largest deportation operation in American history.”
It’s a crime against the decency and the English language that the words “deport” and “deportation” are flung around so blithely, not only by Trump and his hand-puppet, Stephen Miller, but by the mainstream media. What those words describe is the kidnapping, imprisonment, and trafficking of human beings under cover of an executive order that is not a law, but the administrative whim of one man, Donald Trump. When Donald Trump sits down at the Resolute Desk on Inauguration Day and signs a piece of paper put in front of him by Stephen Miller or some other White House functionary, he will not be signing into law a bill that has been passed by the Congress. He will be photo-opping a campaign promise that will be challenged by lawsuit within hours, but in the meantime, lives of immigrants will be upended, and people will die, as they did the last time Trump rounded up undocumented immigrants and stuck them in cages on the Texas border with Mexico.
Remember that? The mainstream media hasn’t reminded you what happened back then, so I will. NBC News reported on May 29, 2019: “At least seven children are known to have died in immigration custody since last year, after almost a decade in which no child reportedly died while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” One case was that of a teenage migrant who died of the flu. The flu. That’s how careful Trump’s border agents were when they detained migrants in hastily constructed camps along the border the last time. NBC reported that in late 2018, a seven-year-old child “succumbed to a rapidly progressive infection that shut down her vital organs.” This was after CPB agents sent her on a 90-mile bus ride from one CPB location to another, even though she was showing symptoms of vomiting and dehydration. In the eight months following the death of the seven-year-old child, several more migrant children died while being held in facilities that had concrete floors and thin mats to sleep on.
So, let’s have a show of hands: How many readers who have children allowed them to sleep overnight someplace where all they had was a thin mat laid on a concrete floor, and the lights were left on all night? I have three children. I’ve never sent one of them to a summer camp or a sleepover at a friend’s house where they would be treated like that.
Why was this done to migrant children in 2018 and 2019 during Trump’s first term in office? Because Donald Trump and Stephen Miller didn’t see brown-skinned migrant children as human beings. They saw them then and see them now as among the ten million “undocumented immigrants” they plan on “deporting,” starting, as Miller and Trump and the rest of them have said, on “day one.”
Do you recall what else happened back in 2017 and 2018 and 2019 when Donald Trump began his first “round up” of undocumented migrants? CPB agents “mistakenly” detained and imprisoned several American citizens. A brother and sister who were crossing the border to attend school in San Ysidro, California, were arrested by CPB agents. The nine-year-old girl was held for 32 hours because she “provided inconsistent information during her inspection” at the border crossing and did not look like the picture on her passport, agents claimed. She was nine years old and she had a valid U.S. passport, for crying out loud. That is what justified this frightened little girl being held overnight in some CBP lockup on the border. Her 14-year-old brother was initially charged with human trafficking and sex trafficking when he was arrested with his sister. He had to sign some sort of phony document asserting that she was his cousin, not his sister, in order for the two of them to be released.
That is how efficient the Customs and Border Patrol officials were in dealing not only with immigrants who did not have proper citizenship papers, but with citizens of the United States who had brown skin. Donald Trump promises this time around to arrest and deport the children of migrants who were born in this country and thus have American citizenship, as well as their undocumented parents. He also promises to sign an executive order canceling birthright citizenship, which is found in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
In July 2019, Trump claimed that immigrants being held at the border in makeshift detention facilities “are very happy with what’s going on because, relatively speaking, they're in much better shape right now than compared to the unbelievable poverty” in the countries from which they came.
That is what “deport” and “deportation” meant the last time Trump was in office, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of what happened at the border when children were separated from their parents. The Department of Homeland Security reported in June of 2018 that 1,995 children had been separated from their parents during a six-week period that spring. By January 2019, a Health and Human Services report said that 2,737 children had been held in federal custody apart from their parents. “Because of poor record keeping” the exact number was not known, but it was thought to be “several thousand higher.” In October 2020, just before Trump lost the election, the New York Times reported that 5,500 children had been separated from their parents by the Trump administration.
Let’s take a moment to consider what that actually means. Little children and teenagers, many of whom had traveled more than 1,000 miles to reach the Mexican border with the United States, were forcibly taken from the custody of their parents and held in makeshift facilities without being told what was happening to them, or why, or where their parents were. Many of these children did not have identification. In at least one facility, it was reported that 10-year-old girls were taking care of toddlers who may or may not have been related to them. Some of the children were shipped off to foster parents, who were paid money by the federal government to hold the children. Some detained and separated children still have not been reunited with their parents six years later.
There are reports that some of the separated children were forcibly and illegally treated with antipsychotic drugs in order to keep them docile. At least one child under drugs fell down repeatedly, hitting her head. She had to be transported by wheelchair, she was so disoriented. Another child, a girl, tried to open a window in one of the detention facilities. She was grabbed by guards, shoved against the wall and choked. She fainted to the floor. Two guards held her down while a doctor forcibly injected her with an antipsychotic medication.
In 2018, a federal judge found that forcibly medicating children without the permission of their parents violated child welfare laws. Between 2014 and 2018, the Office of Refugee Resettlement received 4,556 complaints of child sexual abuse or harassment of migrant children. The Office of Refugee Resettlement sounds like it’s part of the United Nations. No, it is a part of the Department of Health and Human Services created by the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980.
So, dear readers, our government already has an office, established by a law passed by Congress, to deal with the chaos that is certain to result from Trump’s “plan” to deport 10 to 15 million undocumented immigrants. Or maybe Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will decide that the Office of Resettlement of Refugees is part of the “deep state” and move to shut it down, so we won’t have any department of our federal government with experience and expertise in dealing with the kinds of problems Trump and Miller and the rest of their fascist crew are about to create.
But all we’ve talked about so far is the children. What of the adult migrants who will be swept up in this nightmare? What will that look like?
Imagine that you are a Haitian migrant living in, say, Springfield, Ohio. We already know there are a lot of Haitian migrants with temporary protected status living in the midwestern town, many of them for years. So, as a Haitian husband and wife, you rent an apartment, or maybe even a little house. Maybe you have established a small business, like a laundromat or a Haitian restaurant. You have a couple of children. In your house or apartment, you’ve bought living room furniture, such as a sofa and chairs and a coffee table and maybe side tables, and you have a kitchen table and chairs where the family eats its meals. There are two bedrooms with beds and dressers for the parents’ and children’s clothes, and closets where you hang coats and shirts and pants, and you have at least one bathroom with towels and toiletries, and maybe there is a little laundry room with a washer and dryer you saved up to buy. In the kitchen, you have the usual array of plates and bowls and glasses and knives and forks and spoons and cooking utensils like spatulas and serving spoons and ladles, and in the cabinets, you have pots and pans and frying pans and maybe a waffle iron and a coffee maker where you can brew strong Haitian coffee.
One day, a van pulls up and a number of men get out and they knock on your door and show you a piece of paper, and the next thing you know, you and your wife are in flex-cuffs, your cell phones have been taken from you, and you’re told that more CPB officers are at the school detaining your two children in the same manner. You are put into the van, where you find several other confused and frightened Haitian couples. You are driven to a large building that you recall was once a Walmart. You are hustled inside and put into chain-link cages and your cuffs are removed and you’re handed aluminum foil “blankets” and told to sit down and await orders. You ask where your children are because you know that when they left for school that morning, they did not take any identification, because you’ve been there in Springfield for three years, and kids don’t need ID cards to attend school. You are told not to worry about it, your kids are being “taken care of.”
Your little house or apartment? Gone. All the possessions you spent two or three years buying with the money you earned working at a chicken plant or the laundromat or the restaurant you established? Gone. The sofa cost $750 of your hard-earned dollars. Gone. The dress you bought for your 9th grader’s upcoming graduation from middle school? Gone. Your son’s new soccer shoes? Gone. The necklace and locket you gave your daughter for Christmas? Gone. Your son’s new video game console he got for Christmas from his grandmother? Gone. The new flatscreen television where the whole family watched soccer games streaming from Britain and France and Spain and Brazil? Gone.
You have the clothes on your back. You don’t know where your two children are. Your house or apartment and your business are gone. You are in the midst of what Stephen Miller calls “the largest deportation operation in American history.”
You have been arrested and imprisoned and stripped of your belongings and access to your money. You have been earning a living and paying taxes and living in America as a migrant with protected status, but no longer. In the America of Stephen Miller and Donald Trump and “border czar” Tom Homan, you are a criminal. There are thousands and thousands just like you.
