Can We Call Them “Disappearances” Now?
Can we say the administration is putting people in camps?
So, in a recent post, I noted the word “disappeared” had come to mind when looking at the way ICE agents took Mahmoud Khalil into custody with the intention of deporting him despite the fact that he holds a green card. His deportation is on hold as his case is currently being reviewed by federal courts. Since that time, the actions of the Trump administration regarding alleged members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), have brought this issue back to the fore of my mind. Hundreds of alleged members of TdA have been apprehended and shipped to a prison in El Salvador without any due process. The media descriptions of how they have been handled again made me think of the concept of disappearances. The prison in El Salvador also raises the specter of detention camps.
Let me be as clear as possible. For those who are unfamiliar, authoritarian regimes in Latin America, especially in the 1970s often engaged in the act of seizing dissidents and taking them into custody without any due process. In extreme versions, unmarked vans with uninformed government agents would literally nab people off the streets. This came to be called “disappearing” people and those who were disappeared where also called “the disappeared” (desaparacidos in Spanish). To be “disappeared” was to be taken into custody without due process and to be held at unknown locations, although maybe one’s family could guess where the disappeared might be. The victims of these crimes were frequently tortured and executed.
The most infamous example in Argentina was when the government would fly those detained over the ocean and dump them out. No body, no crime, right?
In Chile over 2,000 political prisoners were killed and over 30,000 were tortured.
So, look, I understand we aren’t talking about something along those lines. But I would note that we are comparing the Pinochet regime, which came to power in one of the bloodiest, if not the bloodiest, coups in Latin American (if not modern) history with an allegedly liberal democracy in the United States.
We should not be in a position wherein the actions of the US government are comparable to Chile in the mid-1970s, and yet here we are.
What is happening right now in the United States of America is that hundreds of individuals were rounded up by federal authorities without formal charges or due process and expelled from the US to be housed in a prison in El Salvador. It was done for political, not criminal justice/public order reasons. It was done to feed the fear of the other by Americans and it was done to instill terror in the hearts of those whom the administration wants to be afraid, namely immigrants of all stripes.
As such, it is true that what we are seeing is not as extreme as what happened in Argentina, Brazil, or Chile. However, it is tiresome to constantly have these discussions wherein the retort is that a given word is too extreme to apply or that, well, it is pretty bad, but let’s wait until it is so bad that we can use more extreme terms before we get too exercised about it all.
But when the government is picking persons up and whisking them to a prison facility in another country for an indefinite period without due process of law (and in violation of a court order) based on flimsy assertions, this should be seen as a problem. It is certainly not law and order. It is not the rule of law. Add in that families are not being informed of their whereabouts, and you have a situation that can be called disappearances that includes torture.
Put directly, the government of the United States, at the direction of President Trump, is engaging in human rights abuses to score political points.
I suppose it is better than nothing that we have a list of names* and some propaganda videos** to give some information to families, so that is better than the Chileans or Argentines during their dirty wars. But that isn’t exactly a lot of solace for families and friends, let alone for the imprisoned.
For example, via USAT: Trump shipped them to El Salvador. Their families say their only crime was a tattoo.
The immigration judge looked over the crowded courtroom and called his next case: “Jefferson José? Jefferson José?”
No one answered.
[…]
Stepping forward, an attorney with an immigrant rights group told Imburgia that Laya Freites’ wife believed he’d been transferred to Texas following a Denver-area traffic stop, and then shipped to a notorious Salvadoran prison.
[…]
“I don’t know where he is and he’s on the docket today,” Imburgia said. “The government needs to show me something about where this individual is.”
Across the U.S., people like Laya Freites have been similarly vanishing ― and re-emerging in one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons.
So, yes, “disappeared” doesn’t sound off the mark to me. If you have to find out that your husband is in prison in El Salvador because of random bits of video, that’s inhumane. Especially when you know you know he is likely to be abused and that you may never see him again.
And again, this is abusing human beings for political theater.
There’s little evidence to support the administration’s contention that large numbers of the deportees are members of the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua. Reporting by USA TODAY last fall found ICE, the FBI and law enforcement agencies in states with reports of the gang’s activity had tallied fewer than 135 members of the gang, while the Trump administration says it deported more than 200 members to El Salvador last week alone.
Please note: this would not be acceptable for the government to be doing if, in fact, it was clear that these individuals were in Tren de Aragua. Even gang members deserve due process. It is infinitely worse that there has been no legal process around this question. If they commit crimes in the US, put them in US prisons. If they should be deported, send them back to Venezuela. There is no legal rationale to send them to a third country’s prison.
family members and advocates say officials are rounding up members of an entire nationality without regard for their rights, often picking men with tattoos memorializing soccer teams, family members and their professions ― not dangerous gangs.
Speaking to USA TODAY on Thursday, Laya Freites’ wife said her husband has never been in a gang. They fled Venezuela and requested asylum at the southern border 15 months ago. The pair were released into the United States.
This is not the actions of a democracy.
But, of course, Who needs due process when you have tattoos?
Yes, tattoos.
Also via USAT: Roses, Real Madrid, crowns: What to know about tattoos used to deport Venezuelan migrants.
Tren de Aragua − unlike many predominantly Latino gangs − doesn’t require tattoos signifying membership, although some members have them, Ronna Risquez, a Venezuelan journalist who authored a book about the gang, told the Associated Press.
Nonetheless, ICE is using tattoos are evidence. For example,
Real Madrid logo:Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, a professional soccer player who fled after torture with electric shocks and suffocation after participating in demonstrations against Maduro’s government, has a tattoo on his arm of a crown atop a soccer ball, resembling the logo of the Spanish team Real Madrid, with a rosary and the word “Dios,” his lawyer Linette Tobin said. “DHS alleges that this tattoo is proof of gang membership,” Tobin said. “In reality, he chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favorite soccer team Real Madrid.” Reyes has no criminal record.
Somehow, that doesn’t seem like enough to do, well, anything to a person, let alone ship them to a prison for terrorists in El Salvador.
Note the following from the piece.
Of the 50 people identified who have been deported to a prison in El Salvador, 44 have no criminal record in either the U.S. or Venezuela, according to Kate Wheatcroft, an immigrant rights activist with the New York-based nonprofit Together & Free.
See, also, Adam Isaacson, who is an expert on the region and works for WOLA, Who Did the Trump Administration Just Send to El Salvador’s Dungeons?
On March 20 CBS News obtained and published a full list of all 238 Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration sent to El Salvador on March 15, despite a judge’s orders. It appears that 137 had no due process at all—they were sent under the fourth-ever invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The other 101 apparently had orders of removal.
But even though none committed any crimes in El Salvador, the government of Nayib Bukele sent them directly to the “Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT),” a mega-jail built about two years ago to hold gang members, from which no prisoner is known to have been released.
For many of their loved ones, the CBS list was the first confirmation of their whereabouts. “Family members of the men say they’ve had no way to communicate with their loved ones,” noted Jonathan Lemire and Nick Miroff at the Atlantic, “So they study the [Salvadoran government’s] propaganda videos for glimpses of sons and spouses among the deportees.”
Isaacson lists 15 specific person who were sent to El Salvador who appear to have no gang affiliations whatsoever.
Let me be clear. I am not defending Tren de Aragua. But in the United States, one is supposed to have due process of law. One is not supposed to be arrested, let alone sent to a prison in another country, on the whim of politicians. This is all simply wrong. Again, this is our government, funded by our tax dollars, engaging in blatant human rights abuses in public.
And, I would add, cartoonishly so. In a brief in federal court, Acting Field Office Director Robert L. Cerna asserted the following.
While it is true that many of the TdA members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. It demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.
That is absurd and a dangerous manner for the government to act. It certainly does not seem sufficient grounds for imprisonment in El Salvador. Please note again: TdA is a Venezuelan gang.
What happened to these men was a clear violation of the US Constitution. The Fifth Amendment states: “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Note that it does not say “citizens.” These persons were deprived of liberty without due process of law.
Full.
Stop.
For further information, see Isaacson’s Timeline of What Appears to be Defiance of a Judicial Order: Applying the Alien Enemies Act to Venezuelans Sent to El Salvador’s Prisons Without Due Process.
At any rate, we are roughly two months into this administration. Trump is clearly acting like a dictator, and we have human beings being shipped to camps in a country that itself has an aspiring authoritarian at the helm. It looks like this admininstration will, in fact, pluck people off the streets it doesn’t like and send them to foreign prisons to be abused.
What words are now willing to use?
By the way, I see several things going on from the list I discussed in this post, including propaganda (see below) unreality, victimhood, and law and order. And the “us v. them” of it all is pretty staggering, yes?
*Via CBS News: Here are the names of the Venezuelans deported by the U.S. to El Salvador.
**This is grotesque and, yes, fascistic. And all the more so because of the public complicity of Secretary Rubio.
It is not just theater and intimidation. The prisons are for-profit, people are making money from this. More prisoners, more money.
ICE uses for-profit confinement in the U.S. too.
The GOP typically finds ways to make money from its initiatives, if you are wondering why Canadian and European tourists are being targeted.
I remember talking to a Russian emigre in about 2002. Some news had come out about how Putin was treating certain oligarchs badly, and so I mentioned it to him. He shrugged and said, “They are criminals!” Which reminded me of what a different culture he had grown up in.
Now it’s here. Now it’s a subculture of the US. I can imagine that same shrug and dismissal here.
In my imagining how this might end, I start to wonder how the El Salvador government will respond to a request for all those prisoners to be returned. Are they now hostages to be bargained for goodies? That seems a likely outcome if a Democrat becomes president, and who knows how Trump will handle that. He’s such a terrible negotiator, thinking only one step ahead, that this has no doubt never occurred to him.
I traveled in Chile in the mid 80s when desaparecidos were still a thing and still occurring. More recently I got to go to the Guyasamin museum in Quito Ecuador (highly recommend), the artist whose work recorded that era in Chile and elsewhere. This is a terrifying turn in American politics.
WaPo seems to agree with you: “They were arrested during routine ICE check-ins. Then they disappeared.”
He’s only been in office 3 months and has a lot of other stuff he’s doing. Pinochet, Noriega, and others started slow, too.
Give it time. He’s got bad hombres working for him. He’ll get there.
ETA: “The United States will pay a very low fee for them,”
Discount incarceration, too! Yay! I guess.
Updated lynchings?
Here and there you find photos of lynchings with a bunch of white men posing with huge smiles next to the victim. Sound familiar?
@Steven L. Taylor
Trump is trangressing long established law and regulation in his fanatical quest for unitary power. So we need to dispense with qualifiers and modifiers like “allgedly” while trying to grapple with this unending stream of horrifying events that elicit recollections of Pinochet, Argentine helicopters, and the Third Reich which now float up in our minds We see the arc of this thing unfolding before our very eyes. And compared to the place of familiarity where we are coming from, anyplace further down the continuum, that moves us closer to Pinochet and “the Dissapeared,” is purely bad. No allegedly about any of it, Trump is escalating violence in the exercise of power. These kind of things have momentum. We’re not in liberal democracy-land anymore, Dorothy.
A lot of people on the right in this country have been “joking” about helicopter rides for years.
I wonder what happens if the propaganda videos and the memes aren’t worth it. And by “wonder what happens” I’m thinking in part that the Gulf of Mexico and Related Territories has currently that will let bodies wash up ashore, so would they go to the pacific or is dead bodies washing up on beaches just part of the appeal this time.
@just nutha: Trump can’t make money supplying slaves for someone’s work camp. smh.
@Gustopher: Maybe that’s why he’s getting the price break on confinement.
@Rob1: I think you are misreading or misunderstanding how I am applying “allegedly” in that quoted portion. I was not applying it to the actions of tbt Trump administration
I was noting that the US is allegedly a liberal democracy. I am noting that the actions being undertaken do not conform to what a supposed liberal democracy would do.
I’m reminded of previous administrations dancing around words because certain words have meaning and consequences when spoken.
Is China committing genocide against Tibet or the Uigars? Not if it endangers Most Favored Nation trading status…
If you say what it is — fascism, with a side order of concentration camps — then you have to ask “would I be a good German?”
And also “what can I do that won’t provoke a much worse backlash? To myself and/or everyone else?” Assassination rarely is that one simple trick to restore democracy and the rule of law, for instance.
How did Chile get out of that? How did other countries step back from the brink of that?
@Steven L. Taylor:
That’s precisely the “allegedly” I wanted to speak to — along with all the ways we are couching this moment, and not speaking directly about what is confronting us.
We who value the America of our upbringing, are in a state of shock that these things are happening to us. Our us of language reflects that. And I fear that as a society, we will acquiesce to the idea of inevitability.
America has been a liberal democracy. And now it is being violently remade with complete disregard to the law and the courts.
@Rob1: I guess I find it odd that in a post in which I am saying that, yes, the US government is engaging in disappearances and sending supposed undesirables to camps to be tortured that you are leveling this critique.
Keep in mind that I am also trying to get through to people who still don’t see what is really going on.
@Gustopher:
I don’t see how this ends without bloodshed.
Feels strange to be the place where other countries warn their citizens not to go.
@Beth: Whose blood? And how do we get there?
Seriously though, if Trump has a stroke on the toilet, falls face first onto the bathroom floor, drags on for about 4 to 6 weeks of weak looking semi-coherent rambling* while the rest of the administration jockeys for position to see who gets to use him as a puppet, and then he dies… I think the entire thing falls apart. Minimal bloodshed. It splinters, there are terrible people, but not working together.
It’s really hard for dictatorships to do that first big transfer of power, and if they can’t even call him a martyr…
*: his current semi-coherent rambling appears lively. And is too close to coherent. You can Devine likely meaning.
@Steven L. Taylor:
My comment wasn’t meant to be a criticism specifically of your post, so much as a general criticism of the oblique way in which this ongoing destruction of our society is too often being discussed. We’ve blown past “DEFCON 1” here. Explosions are being reported, institutions crumbling, smoke rising.
Those of us from generations with a corporate memory of “normal,” have an obligation to emphatically convey to our younger members, all that is taking place is far, far from normal — so far from normal, that words like fascism and treason can be used without modifiers, or accusations of hyperbole.
The truth of our predicament has been slow to grasp for a majority of our fellow citizens. This in itself is cause for alarm.
Your phrase “allegedly a liberal democracy” prodded a growing awareness in me, that most Americans have not a clue that they have been living their “best lives” as beneficiaries of a liberal democracy. Most don’t even know what that means, so they don’t appreciate what they are in the process of losing. We need to use our language to reframe this thing for our fellow citizens.