The Republican “Final Solution”

Dear Group,

Last Monday I experienced a wave of recognition, then nausea, as I read the “1600 Daily,” an  email I receive from “The White House” every day and sometimes twice a day. I’ve copied the relevant piece for you to read at the end of this section. 

Many months ago I read an opinion piece in which the author asserted that deporting 11 million “illegal” aliens living among us just wasn’t practical; it could never happen; it was logistically impossible. At the time I concurred. I couldn’t imagine it: people taken into custody and summarily deported when they dropped off their citizen children at school, young children removed from their mother’s arms at the U.S. border, horror stories of youths who discover they’re not U.S. citizens only when they sign up at college, students who then face potential deportation. All that and more I couldn’t imagine. 11 million deportations? No way, thought I. Not practical. Couldn’t happen. Inhumane. Un-American. Unthinkable.

I have news. It is happening right now, it is creeping up on us. If we don’t pay attention now some of us will only recognize Trump’s and his Republican Party’s “Final Solution” too late and to our belated national shame. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Representative likely to win a seat from the Bronx in November is vilified by some as an extremist for calling to abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). At first I thought Ocasio-Cortz’ stance against ICE was a politically bad move at best, but increasingly shrill emails defending ICE from the White House like the one I copied below have convinced me otherwise.

That “impossible” goal of deporting 11 million people living peacefully among us is exactly what is happening, and ICE is at the center. My thinking turned on reading How Trump Radicalized ICE in The Atlantic magazine. I strongly recommend you read it, too.

The Trump, Sessions, Miller, Bannon, Identity Evropa strategy is clear: First, demonize all immigrants as rapists, murderers, subhuman lowlife–exactly the same strategy used by Hitler against the Jews in the 1930s. Once dehumanized it is easy to justify inhumane treatment, easier for we citizens to look the other way, to believe it is “not our problem.” The vomit coming out the White House is clear: ICE’s “life-saving mission,” “saving victims,” “the heroes” who “save” us. Save us from what? The neighbors we’ve known for twenty years, people whose children are U.S. citizens, people who pay taxes, people with whom we break bread?

Surely most ICE agents are not monsters, neither was every member of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. Trump, der Lider, tells us and the ICE agent theirs is an honorable job, a sometimes distasteful job, but a job that must be done, a job necessary to safeguard our wives and children from the threat of the illegals. 

That McMorris Rodgers wanly tries to carve out a narrow non-citizen safe place, a “renewable legal status,” for the Dreamers (the few who remind her of herself) in her failed compromise immigration bill is small comfort. That the Trump, Sessions, Miller policy of family separation at the border was stopped is small comfort. The overall strategy is clear: Instill terror in the immigrant community, get the citizens of U.S. to turn away from them, frighten immigrant and mixed immigrant families into self deportation. Praise ICE agents for doing “the hard work.” It’s hard and distasteful but someone has to tear parents from their citizen children. It’s the right thing to do! Use ICE to deport as many of the 11 million as possible who haven’t already succumbed to fear of the Trump government. Do it all before the voters understand they have become complicit in an inhumane policy worthy of Hitler himself.

This is Trump’s, his Republican Party’s, and by default McMorris Rodgers’ “Final Solution” to the immigrant “problem.” It doesn’t matter the motivation, whether it is racism or curbing the potential electoral power of immigrants become citizens. It doesn’t matter that McMorris Rodgers believes she’s sincerely not a racist. The inhumanity of this policy, the manifest parallels of this policy with those of 1930s Germany is there for all to see. I don’t know whether to weep or vomit–but I do know I will vote.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

From the “1600 Daily” received from the White House August 20, 2018:

The Day Ahead

President Donald J. Trump hosts a Salute to the Heroes of ICE and CBP, recognizing the dangerous, important work of America’s border officers. Watch live at 3 p.m. ET.

The life-saving missions of ICE

From saving victims from human smugglers, drug cartels, and criminal gangs to protecting American citizens from crime spilling across our border, President Trump understands the dangerous conditions our border officers face each day. To show his appreciation for their service, the President will highlight the life-saving missions of these heroes today in an event at the White House.  

Even with widespread public support for ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), many Democrats have embraced the previously fringe position that the agency should be abolished. A recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll revealed that even with the left’s recent push, only a quarter of Americans want ICE eliminated. 

The heroes who protect our borders are a vital piece of our national security. Getting rid of ICE would be devastating to the safety of American families, particularly those living in communities across the Southwestern United States. Our border officers are the first line of defense for these vulnerable Americans: During the 2017 fiscal year, ICE arrested more than 127,000 aliens with criminal convictions or charges. 

President Trump promised that he would secure our borders and keep our communities safe. Today, he is honoring the public servants who risk it all to help achieve that. 

Watch a Salute to the Heroes of ICE and CBP live at 3 p.m. ET.

The storiesPresident Trump stands with the victims of illegal alien crime