CMV: Mass Deportations are immoral and the wrong choice for America

There are competing realities here, one not more valid than the other, and so the truth of what is right and good here initially eludes me. I'm humble before both the concern for people and the duty to govern for Americans. But I will move forward as my conscience compels me to.

It's evident law-and-order and morality are fluid concepts. They are fluid because words and laws have power, and people who want power attempt to re-engineer ideas and words to suit them. It's a contest usually. But in times of political stability, there are some reasonable limits I think we took for granted before the time of Trump.

We have a constitutional amendment that prevents an insurrectionist from being sworn into Presidential office. It is Amendment 14, section 3. That's a whole other topic, but the courts recognize what happened on Jan 6. Trump is President despite this, and the Jan 6 rioters are free after having been convicted in court. Elon Musk, at the behest of Trump is performing in ways our government obviously did not anticipate, but in ways that are clear violations of the American people. And he is free to do so because he is likely the wealthiest man alive.

ICE is deporting common folk without due process. Their civil liberties are being violated, their personhood ignored. I have a hard time labeling them illegal when they serve me my food with a smile and I easily have more in common with them in my daily life then I do with Trump or any of his kind. Working class folk and family people get each other.

Homan, the head of the deportation effort, was complaining that things had slowed down because these immigrants were being trained to know their rights; their constitutional rights. Our constitution recognizes these people among the equal men, key in subject, of our own Declaration of Independence. At that time at our country's founding, there was not an American that wasn't directly aware of their immigrant heritage from Europe. And almost every member of the nation to come would do so, or be in fact delivered, from elsewhere. We will always be a nation of immigrants.

Homan was admitting indirectly there's an inherent problem with removing these people as such. People, illegal nowhere truly save in the vague concept of ownership American citizens place on land that was forcefully claimed from others in a history of brutal expansion..

Additionally, there is a concern that any claim to some masses of violent criminals is a matter of propaganda. So much of the official reporting is being taken down from ICE and Homeland Security sites and re-written as we speak. But you can review a critical take of Trump's claims here in a BBC article titled: Migrants with criminal records - what new US data shows.

But I've read another article recently that stated we have a think-tank problem here in America compounding our corporate media problem here and around the world. The think-tank problem has to do with dark money, usually from foreign interests, and taken to feed the soundbites of righteous politicians every day. Information just isn't what it used to be. So I value skepticism. I thank you all for yours. Competing narratives do not do us as much of a service as we need for this argument. So let me switch gears.

There are many ways to lead. There are costs to each scenario and I believe the cost of letting these people stay peacefully while their court cases are sorted and we ease pathways to citizenship, respecting that our law enforcement is equipped to respond to acting criminals as they already have been, is preferable to the human cost of deporting them in a categorically racial manner. I think of The Stanford Prison Experiment. When people are detained without normal civil protections, away from the inspection of journalists and the service of attorneys, the visiting rights of families and neighbors, and dehumanized in the way Trump has dehumanized them, they are vulnerable to the worst fate. Imprisoned without dignity and under the watch of potentially hateful people in a time of bold hate.

And these are people. And the roles could easily one day be reversed - maybe aliens come down and subject our species, maybe Chinese drones insert themselves over American skies and freeze our way of life, maybe anything; and karma ends up being the bitch we should fear under God - and it would have, should have, and still is our duty so long as our Statue of Liberty Stands, so long as we are people of faith and morality, so long as we are united in bloody history of oppression after oppression; it remains our duty as Americans of the United States to "hold these truths to be self-fucking evident." Those people, that were scooped up from their peaceful lives, should be returned to their families and their homes, or alternatively to the courts through which fair justice awaits them. A wise leader, a compassionate leader, a humane and compassionate leader of a character I would be proud to serve under would not have taken Trump's path, nor would they have had to. True power favors dignity to all good people. This ongoing interpretation of law and order, of what's right, was just A choice, not THE choice.

Wanting criminals to face justice I can agree with. That times may have changed Gitmo, arguable. That mass, indiscriminate deportation was the obvious answer? Unacceptable. America is bigger and better than this.