While the Trump regime is marketing lies about those it illegally deported to Bukele’s concentration camp (CECOT) [see P.S.], Trump and his sycophants are also preparing to use this model of extrajudicial rendition to deport to a place beyond the law anyone the Trump regime, on its own, decides is guilty, “the home-growns” in Trump parlance.
When I first heard of Trump’s words to Bukele caught on a “hot mic” as they filed in for the Trump/Bukele press conference in the Oval Office on April 14th, I found them so egregious, so damning, that even I had to ask if I was being fed a line.
It took a little digging but, yes, those really were Trump’s words.
The whole seven minutes on this British talkshow is worth hearing, but, by all means, at least listen from 4:25 on. Here’s what I heard:
Trump: “Home-growns are next, home-growns. You gotta build, like, five more prisons.”
Bukele: “Ya, we got space.”
[background knowing laughter]
Trump: “It’s not big enough.”
British talk show host commenting on the exchange: “I don’t know if the laughter in the background is more chilling than the words.”
Of course, the Trump regime offers a “law and order” spin, suggesting that those to be rendered are all folks definitely guilty of lurid crimes that resonate with the listener’s idea of horror: rape, assault, bashing in a grandmother’s head with a baseball bat. It is all a plan to soften up the listener with the idea that the crimes of anyone the regime accuses are so heinous that it OK to bypass the Constitutionally guaranteed right to due process of law. But, clearly, just like in 1930s Germany, this is a recipe for the Trump regime to unilaterally decide who to ship off to a concentration camps, camps that, arguably, lie beyond the reach of the U.S. law.
It would be hard to more blatantly violate (and propose to violate) both the Constitution and the law—but many right wing media listeners (as well as people who have tuned-out for the sake of their sanity) will tend not to comprehend the consequences of granting the Trump regime this dangerous discretion.
With the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case now amplified by Trump’s voiced intent to send off the “home-growns” (i.e. not just “illegal immigrants”, but any legal citizen the regime decides to accuse) to Salvadoran concentration camps, the cat is out of the bag. The threat is real. Trump is an out-of-control monster happily willing to trash our sacred rights in his grasp for power.
Do not let this issue get lost in the news cycle. Talk it up with any who will listen. Call those who represent you—repeatedly. (5Calls.org makes it easy.)
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Doug Muder on concentration camps:
The essential difference between a legitimate prison and a concentration camp is legal process. If you can be sent there on somebody's unsupported say-so, you'll stay there until somebody else says you can leave, and while you're there you have no way to protest your treatment, then you're in a concentration camp.
P.P.S. This plan of extrajudicial rendition to El Salvador has been in the works of the Trump II regime from nearly the beginning. Recall that, early on, there was some chatter about re-opening the detention facility at Guantanamo to park immigrants facing deportation. The plan was scuttled and abruptly fell out of the news, perhaps after the regime realized that Guantanamo might not be sufficiently removed from the reach of the U.S. court system. The current plan was hatched with President Bukele of El Salvador, a man Trump describes as his good friend and a man who describes himself as “the coolest dictator in the world”. Two weeks into the Trump regime, two months ago, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to El Salvador to visit Bukele. While there Rubio made a remarkable speech (watch here starting at 2:50) in which he stated that President Bukele had agreed to receive and “house in his jails” deportees of any nationality including “dangerous American criminals”. (In the blur of daily outrages from the Trump regime you would certainly be pardoned if you missed news of Rubio’s visit, the agreement they struck, and the implications of Rubio’s speech—I certainly missed all of that at the time.)
Mr. Rubio neglected to say just how dangerous and criminal the Trump regime might consider U.S. citizens who speak ill of our wannabe Führer. Furthermore, Rubio also failed to make any argument as to why Bukele’s accepting U.S. citizen “criminals” for deportation to El Salvador would be better than stateside incarceration. Looking back on Rubio’s remarkable speech, the reason now seems a clear—and deeply chilling— reminder of the Trump regime’s dictatorial extrajudicial ambitions.
If you have time, check out the many parallels between the autocratic, dictatorial machinations of Bukele in El Salvador as detailed in Bukele’s wikipedia article and compare them to the flurry of actions by the Trump regime over the last three months. It is a disturbing, but illuminating, comparison.