False Imprisonment by Geoff Carter « The Pen in Hand Blog

Attribution: Paul Goyette from Chicago, USA, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Geoff Carter

We’re not supposed to be a country that imprisons innocent people. It states in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and that “among these are Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness” and that it is the right of any people anywhere to change any government that would destroy these rights—which is exactly what our American founding fathers, and the thousands of American volunteers in The Continental Army did. By doing so, we gained our independence from an unjust, authoritarian, and tyrannical king.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are pretty words indeed. It’s unfortunate that our American government has never quite lived up to them. The phrase meant little to those condemned to slavery, or to women, and—in the early days of our republic—white men without property. Everyone else was equal, though. All the rich white guys were able to pursue their happiness.

It is to our credit, however, that the Constitution was written to be a flexible document, one that changes with the times. The original Bill of Rights unequivocally states every American’s personal rights. The following amendments have continued the process—the very gradual process—of ensuring these rights engraved in the Declaration of Independence—for everyone.

The Thirteenth Amendment, passed in 1865, abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868, granted birthright citizenship to all its citizens, including freed slaves, and which guaranteed equal protection under the laws. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the voting rights of freed slaves but ask any African American trying to register to vote in Mobile, Alabama during the 1950s or who had to put up with the terrorist tactics of the Ku Klux Klan whether those guaranteed rights were real or simply an unrealized ideal.

And then, almost sixty years later, in 1920, the 19^th Amendment guaranteeing women’s right to vote was ratified—which seemed very tardy. Then, in 1971, the 26^th Amendment, which granted suffrage to eighteen-year-olds, was granted. All these amendments, and others, expanded the rights of all Americans to participate in and benefit from our republic. Generally, our country has been evolving toward the ideal that “all men (and women) are created equal.”

The fight for equal rights and personal freedoms has continued in all quarters. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson initiated the Great Society, a blanket policy that included the Voting Right Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, educational reforms, environmental reforms, and more. This was a legislative agenda that not only sought to guarantee every American’s right to vote, but promoted the welfare of all Americans, rich or poor. During the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, the federal government under Attorney General Bobby Kennedy stepped in to enforce these federal policies in states that did not wish to see integration or equality.

But for every step forward, we’ve taken at least one step back. After the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were passed, elements in the Deep South retaliated by forming the KKK and instituting state rules like poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent African Americans from voting. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment prohibited poll taxes, but that didn’t stop the white supremacists.

During one of the most shameful periods in American history, our government “relocated” hundreds of Japanese American families during World War II solely because we were at war with Japan. It didn’t matter that most of these detainees were American citizens who had never set foot in Japan or who had volunteered to fight with American armed forces. They were still forcibly taken from their homes, schools, and jobs and imprisoned like common criminals for reasons of “national security” after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Over 110,000 Japanese were detained. 30,000 of them were children. General living conditions, food, and medical care were horrible. Although educational facilities were set up in the camps, they were understaffed, underfunded, and undersupplied. Eventually, after lengthy legal litigation from civil rights activists, the detainees were released. Some were allowed to enlist, and many served gallantly as American servicemen, yet this still remains as one of the black marks of American domestic policy.

Today, despite all the progress for civil rights made during the past two hundred and fifty years, the present administration is in the process of once again rolling back hard-earned American civil rights and personal freedoms. In his rabidly zealous crusade to reshape immigrant policy, Donald Trump and his evil minion Steven Miller have become significantly more aggressive in their detention and deportation policies, targeting immigrants who have chosen America as their sanctuary.

In his “One Big Beautiful Bill”, Trump expanded the ICE budget from $10 billion to over $85 billion. If that wasn’t enough, his recent Secure America Act added $38 billion more to this total, doubling its workforce to over 22,000 employees, greatly expanding its number of detention centers, and vastly increasing the number of arrests.

This last winter, Trump instigated a shock and awe campaign intended to intimidate and cow the American people. During Operation Midway in Chicago, agents stormed into schools, churches, and homes seeking immigrants, often without warrants. In one case, they attacked and apartment building in the middle of the night, forcing tenants to stand outside in the freezing cold wearing only their night clothes.

In Minneapolis, his ICE agents, masked, in unmarked black SUVs, and carrying no identification, accosted, arrested, beat, and sometimes murdered not only undocumented immigrants but even U.S. citizens. These agents have crashed their cars into suspects’ vehicles, taken parents into custody in front of their children, arrested children themselves, and in one case did not allow an aged suspect to dress before taking him out into sub-zero weather.

His ICE agents murdered two innocent citizens protesting the barbaric tactics of his ICE goons. Rene Good and Alex Pretti were shot down in the streets of Minneapolis for no discernible reason other than they were standing up for the rights of others.

Today, many of the detainees are imprisoned in detention centers run by private corporations that are reportedly overcrowded and underfunded. ICE has done its best to prevent both state and federal government representatives from exercising their rights to inspect these facilities. In some cases, they have been arrested and detained for seeking entrance, but despite the best efforts of the ICE thugs, reports of life on the inside of these hell holes have surfaced.

According to The American Immigration Council, at this time over 75,000 detainees are being held in these loacations. Medical care is inadequate, and food is reportedly insufficient or spoiled. Detainees are crammed into cells, sometimes as many as forty people have to share one commode. Prisoners are denied access to lawyers, family members, and disability accommodations. Conditions are reportedly frigid, sewage bubbles up through shower drains, and insects crawl up and down the walls of some facilities (ACLU). Prisoners who speak up face harsh punitive measures.

Many of those arrested have not been arraigned and have no access to legal help. They are being denied due process, one of the guaranteed rights in our Constitution. They are being held without bond, without facing their accusers, and without representation. They may as well be in North Korea or Russia. Many of these detainees are not undocumented immigrants. Many have their green cards. Many are already American citizens being held illegally in these inhumane places that are nothing more than concentration camps. And Donald Trump wants to build more of them.

He will hire more ICE agents and set them loose on our streets to fill these obscenities. He has the money, and, sad to say, he has the support of the Republican Party, who should all be hanging their heads in shame.

This is happening today, in America, and is a thousand times worse than the internment of the Japanese American citizens during World War II. We are allowing nearly 100,000 people to be illegally imprisoned in brutal, unsanitary, and unsafe conditions.

This is Donald Trump. This is what he stands for. This is the Republican Party. This is what they stand for.

What do you stand for?