Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen multiple reports coming out regarding Alligator Alcatraz. These reports are perhaps not surprising to those who have been following ICE detention for any amount of time. They are still, however, horrifying.
The people being housed in Alligator Alcatraz of Florida are reporting severe human rights violations, such as rotten, maggot-infested food, routine flooding, lack of medical care, and other such atrocities. I say this is no surprise because ICE detention facilities have long been known for multiple human rights violations and complaints very similar to these. Rotten food or frozen food or things past their expiration date. No clean water. No privacy. Lights being left on continuously, 24 hours a day. The temperature being held purposely too hot or too cold. One toilet for a hundred people. Not enough beds. Not enough room to lie down. These are common complaints.
In addition, there have been reports of child abuse. There have been hundreds of reports of sexual abuse and assault by guards towards female detainees. Most of these reports were never even investigated. The inhumane conditions, in particular the lack of medical care, have led to needless deaths.
How does ICE get away with treating people this way?
I think it's because, we don't see it as a human rights violation if we don’t consider the people being held as human.
When Alligator Alcatraz opened, there were right-wing supporters celebrating on social media. I saw comments of people saying they hoped the site would be turned into a reality show - especially if people tried to escape and were chased and eaten by alligators. Apparently, that would be "great entertainment."
They do know the plan is to send kids there, right?
The campaign across right-wing media and from within the White House itself has successfully convinced people that the people arrested by ICE are less than human. They are "illegals". They are "criminals". They are "dangerous". They "eat cats and dogs". They are "lazy" and "taking advantage of the welfare system" or maybe they are "stealing jobs". But they are certainly not human. They don’t deserve due process or the protections of the Constitution. They don’t deserve to be treated like you and me. They are less than. They are unclean. They deserve what’s coming to them.
Forget the fact that the majority have no criminal record in the U.S. or elsewhere, and that even among those who do, most have only traffic violations or minor drug charges, like possession of marijuana. Forget the fact that the majority have lived here peacefully for years or even decades. Forget the fact that many have legal permission to be in the country pending the outcome of their asylum claims. Forget the fact ICE is picking up people at work, some of whom even have legal work visas.
Right now, if you are brown and Spanish-speaking, you are a target.
Or, even if you don't speak Spanish. A colleague at a shelter on the other side of the Mexico border reported that a very confused man, who came to the U.S. as a child thirty years ago and currently has a valid green card, showed up at their shelter just a few weeks ago. He got swept up in an immigration raid and kept thinking he'd be able to show his documents and go home, but instead they put him on a bus and dumped him in Nogales, Mexico. He doesn't even speak the language. But he looked like he did.
When the U.S. sent 238 Venezuelan men to the torture prison in El Salvador, we were told they were the "worst of the worst". Yet there were no charges against them, no criminal convictions, and no day in court, so who even really knew who they were? The government even admitted a few were sent due to paperwork errors, and yet, not only refuse to do anything to bring them back but are spending $6 million of taxpayer money for them to stay there. Supporters just shrug this off. They're "dangerous criminals", apparently, no matter what the facts say, merely because they are brown and have a couple of tattoos.
I follow a Facebook page called "The Disappeared," which profiles some of the men who were sent there. There is an 18-year-old boy. Another young man with an autism tattoo in support of his younger brother. A gay barber. A father of three.
These men are not criminals. They just found themselves in the unfortunate position of being pawns in a political game.
They were profiled.
They were dehumanized.
The rise of hatred and the dehumanization of a certain group of people should be familiar to those who know their history. As a people, we have repeatedly had an "us" versus "them" mentality, leading to dehumanizing others and taking away their rights, and then usually, sometime thereafter, their lives. I don't think I have to list all the examples of this, do I? We have a habit of dehumanizing others. Maybe it's to make us feel better about ourselves. Maybe it's because we're miserable and need someone to blame. Maybe it's so we can hoard all the privilege and power without having to share. Maybe it's the evil that runs rampant in our world and in human hearts.
If you can look at another human being and see them as less than human, then you can do whatever you want to them and not feel guilty. You can see them merely as an inconvenience that needs to be eliminated.
As a sidenote, but an important one, a friend posted a story recently about a church that made the headlines by saying out loud to the LGBTQ+ community that they should go kill themselves, or if not, Trump will enact the death penalty on them.
A church said this.
A CHURCH.
The LGBTQ+ community is another group of people we have dehumanized because they challenge our belief system.
I can't help but feel like dehumanizing others actually does the opposite of what people might intend. Those who dehumanize others are really stripping themselves of their own humanity.
Because what does it really mean to be human? Being human means we are uniquely created and loved by our Creator. It means we are individually worthy of love, respect, and dignity, not because of who we are but because of WHOSE we are. Humanity has come this far because of our ability to work together in communities. This requires compassion, empathy, and mutual regard.
When we believe we get to decide who is human and who is not, when we think we get to decide who is worthy of being treated with respect and dignity and who is not, when we think we are the ones who know best about how everyone else should be treated… Aren't we playing God? Or perhaps thinking, we know better than God? At the very least, we are dishonoring the image of God in other human beings.
Scripture speaks about this so often, it would take an entire book to list all of the times God tells us to take care of each other. Here are a few highlights:
Proverbs 14:31 says, "He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker."
Zechariah 7:10 warns, "Do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another."
In Jeremiah 5, a chapter aptly called "The Utter Corruption of God's People," the prophet says:
"For the wicked are found among my people.
They lie in wait like hunters;
destroyers, they catch humans.
Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich;
they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
they do not judge with justice
the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
Shall I not punish them for these things?
says the Lord,
and shall I not bring retribution
on a nation such as this?" (vv. 26-29)
I believe those who support the inhumane treatment of these sons and daughters of the King will be judged, but also those who stand by silently and do nothing while our neighbors are being rounded up like dogs and put in cages we would not even allow dogs to be in.
Find your compassion.
Find your humanity.
Take a stand.
May God have mercy.
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