Musings: Mass deportations create fright — with good cause
Protesters gather outside the federal courthouse regarding the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on June 13 in Nashville, Tennessee. Credit: AP/George Walker IV
Growing up Jewish in the 1950s, memories of the Holocaust were all around me — fresh, vivid, detailed and personal. As a result, the words "mass deportation" are disturbing. But when these words are put into action using legally dubious methods — what the Germans called Night and Fog tactics — then I am deeply disturbed.
It turns out that some recently deported were not only not "the worst of the worst" but some were American citizens and more were legally documented workers or lawful refugees — people with a right to be here.
It is said, "History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Perhaps crimes against humanity are never exactly duplicated, but through the centuries, there have been recurring themes and similar methods. These include a period of propaganda: dehumanizing language and fabricated stories about the "evil natures" of the proposed victims, followed by the actual pogroms, lynchings and massacres.
As a Jew, I might feel that the Holocaust was the most extreme example, but an African American could point to the 346 years between the introduction of slavery to the American colonies and the passage of the first national voting law. Someone of Native American heritage might choose 1620 as the date it all started to go wrong, when the Mayflower arrived.
Japanese Americans at least received a token payment and a written apology in 1988 for their internment in 1942, which on one hand was completely legal under the U.S. Constitution but was also a flagrantly racist denial of liberty without due process.
In each case, the victims were first defamed, then excluded, then persecuted, enslaved, or murdered.
The Christian author and advocate C.S. Lewis mused on the idea that "Heaven and Hell" would "nibble away" at a "Merrie Middle Earth" until there could be "no more middle ground between Goodness and Evil." At that point, people would have to "discern" which is which, and then choose between the two.
I fear that the United States is now at that point.
— Mitchell Kessler, Copiague
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