Always look for patterns. Patterns will tell you what is going on beneath the veil, behind the closed doors. We are now looking at two, count ’em, two, major policy reversals in less than three days. In a previous piece here, we wrote about Linda McMahon being awarded the head of Department of Education post, coveted by Ryan Walters, the Trump Bible-buying superintendant of Oklahoma schools. So that means that there is a Department of Education, still, and it’s not being dissolved and education is going to be handled by the states?
We do not know. There are diametrically opposing news stories and videos buttressing both positions so unless Donald Trump explains to us what is in fact going on, we have no way to know. And that’s not an isolated incident. None other than Tom Homan, who vowed on many occasions to “deport millons” is now laughing at the very idea and calling it “leftist fearmongering.” Now wait a minute, he made these statements on 60 Minutes but it’s the yous and mes fear mongering? Read the transcript of Homan’s interview with Cecilia Vega.Or just listen to a snip here and there. He said what he said.
Donald Trump just announced Tom Homan will be his “border czar” in charge of deportations.
In a recent interview with 60 Minutes, the former ICE director said that he supports deporting kids who were born and raised in the US to undocumented immigrants: “Families can be deported… pic.twitter.com/s84hFiBmh1
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) November 11, 2024
Okay, you got that? He’s going to deport the so-called “anchor babies” who are indeed U.S. citizens. That’s in the Constitution, that if you are born here, then you are a United States citizen, period. Now listen to this next clip. At the end Homan scoffs, “I’ve heard we’re going to deport U.S. citizens” like it’s some fantastic boast. Did not those exact words come out of the man’s mouth on the 60 Minutes interview?
I know how the Pushmi Pullyou feels. We are going one direction and then another and the directions shift every few minutes. Nothing is stable.
So what is to be made of this? Because unless we are all the victims of mass hypnosis, Stephen Miller is all set to build detention camps, like in Nazi Germany of yore.
Miller, according The New York Times, has said that “military funds would be used to build ‘vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers’ for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries.”
The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) would be in charge of the facilities, which The Times has called “camps.”
“The Trump team believes that such camps could enable the government to accelerate deportations of undocumented people who fight their expulsion from the country. The idea is that more people would voluntarily accept removal instead of pursuing a long-shot effort to remain in the country if they had to stay locked up in the interim,” according to The Times.
That concept aligns with what The Times in July described as “The Right-Wing Dream of ‘Self-Deportation’.”
“Trump has said he would build ‘vast holding facilities’ — detention camps — to lock people up as their cases progress; end birthright citizenship, even though the Constitution protects it; and bring back a version of the travel ban from his first term, which barred visitors from several mostly Muslim countries. Another Trump promise, mass deportations, hasn’t been tried since the 1950s; now, polls show majority support for it, including among Latinos,” The Times had reported over the summer.
“Self-deportation,” or, “provoking immigrants to leave of their own volition,” as The Times described it, “has gone out of fashion but the idea continues to lurk.”
“This time, instead of directly pressuring undocumented adults to flee, some immigration opponents are threatening access to school for their children. It’s a nuclear option — requiring the reversal of a Supreme Court ruling that has been a linchpin of educational rights for four decades — that some of Trump’s allies on the right are quietly building support for.”
What we know how to do around here is find out what has been said. There is video or a tweet for everything in this day and age. I don’t know what Team Trump is up to. I merely point out the obvious, that one day it’s concentration camps and mass deportations and kids born here can’t even get a passport — go back and read the articles cited to.
And then the next day (or a week or two later) we find the Border Czar, Homan, laughing out loud at the very idea of deporting a United States citizen. We’re now going to learn what it is to be a gaslighted Pushmi Pullyou. This next excerpt comes from a blog called “GOP Jesus.” I hope this is fiction or satire. I’m afriad it’s not.
Trump donors have pre-built camps in the Arizona desert that can hold up to 100,000 illegals so that the mass deportations can begin immediately after President Trump’s inauguration. “They were easy and cheap to build,” said Leonard Leo’s construction manager, Saxon Burger.
“The inmates won’t be there for more than a week or three, certainly not more than six months, so we didn’t feel the need to put in running water or toilets or showers or anything of that sort. And certainly no expensive air conditioning except in the guard towers and staff offices. The migratories all came from south of us so they should be used to the 100° desert heat already.”
No, who needs a toilet or a shower? Maybe this isn’t real. If you click into the article it reads like CT, but then we now live in a world which would have been categorized as dystopian political satire just a few weeks ago. Matt Gaetz for attorney general? Dr. Oz to head up Medicare and Medicaid? The wrestling lady in charge of the Department of Education?
It’s hard to separate fact from fantasy anymore. And Trump’s recent appointees are not making it any easier.
When Dachau first opened in 1933, near the beginning of Hitler’s complete seizure of power, it was meant as a “reeducation camp” where where were political prisoners, communists and democrats, homosexuals, and the “mentally unstable”, including persons with depression or Parkinson’s. They did not yet persecute the Unterhenschen, the Jews and Gypsies, who they blamed for the ills of the country.
Curious that Trump chooses the opposite tact, by jailing the scapegoats first.
Make no mistake. By the time this is over, those camps will be a smelting pot of Americana.
“It’s hard to separate fact from fantasy anymore.”
And that’s the point isn’t it?
Scare everyone into a catatonic state by proposing something so horrible, you can scarcely imagine it, then turn around and say “That? We were never going to do that! The feeling of relief that ensues makes it seem almost like they’ve done a good thing.
Almost.
Because they’ll still be doing something bad – just not as bad as we were first told.
so, satellite photos can easily answer whether anything has been built in the desert or not. Go find some!
Why don’t you, Nancy? Citizen sleuths are very effective.
No.running water or toilets? Who would be willing to.work.at these camps?
Good question, Gillian.