While few of the men disappeared to El Salvador’s prison had a criminal record, the Trump administration judged nearly all of the men guilty of gang membership because they donned crown tattoos wore Air Jordan sneakers and Chicago Bulls hats.
One fine point of clarification: Whatever name is given to these extrajudicial incarceration centers in Salvador where people are deported to as part of tRump’s so-called crackdown on terrorists and criminal gangs, they are not in fact “prisons.” Prisons are for charged, tried, and adjudicated persons who have broken the Law and now must pay the penalty. Call these ‘High Security’ hoosegows what they are: namely, “Concentration Camps.” Those are defined as being places for confinement that exist outside of any legal framework. Starvation, Torture, Isolation, and No Avenue for Relief is the Norm. That is what awaits tRump’s political enemies, critics, and anyone else he deems unfit to live here, no matter what their legal status is. Today it’s some 14 year old kid whose ‘crime’ was to dress in sports gear deemed ‘illegal’ or to have tattoos that fall afoul of Official guidelines* Tomorrow it could be you or me for any capricious and spurious reason, which the government doesn’t even feel the need to justify.
* Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Hegsith’s Nazi tattoos apparently are totally Acceptable, and didn’t raise too many eyebrows in the Senate confirmation hearings when he was Approved by an overwhelming Majority of US Senators on both sides of the aisle. Instead they focused on more important issues, like how many ‘push-ups’ he could do. 🙄
Sheer laziness. It's like cops shooting people who run away from them. A fugitive does not per se pose a danger. It is those who run towards you who pose the danger. In the UK, being the author of rap lyrics has been deemed to constitute evidence of guilt for crimes associated with the sentiments expressed in the lyric.
A mere appearance of association is thus deemed sufficient to convict of criminal acts. This is entirely consistent in the US - with shooting to kill fugitives, with the notion that carrying nail clippers onto an aircraft constitutes intention to hijack it, or that anyone who wishes to hide their identity on the Internet has got something criminal that they want to hide.
It's strange that all the prior indications of what this administration would do when it acquired power were never assumed to mean that it would do exactly what it is now, in fact, doing. Perhaps the general public allows more leeway in its judgments of its government than does the government who rules them. Perhaps the general public placed excessive faith in a rule of law that is now being trampled asunder by a government that duped the general public into trusting that it, too, placed faith in that rule of law. A mountebank government.
One fine point of clarification: Whatever name is given to these extrajudicial incarceration centers in Salvador where people are deported to as part of tRump’s so-called crackdown on terrorists and criminal gangs, they are not in fact “prisons.” Prisons are for charged, tried, and adjudicated persons who have broken the Law and now must pay the penalty. Call these ‘High Security’ hoosegows what they are: namely, “Concentration Camps.” Those are defined as being places for confinement that exist outside of any legal framework. Starvation, Torture, Isolation, and No Avenue for Relief is the Norm. That is what awaits tRump’s political enemies, critics, and anyone else he deems unfit to live here, no matter what their legal status is. Today it’s some 14 year old kid whose ‘crime’ was to dress in sports gear deemed ‘illegal’ or to have tattoos that fall afoul of Official guidelines* Tomorrow it could be you or me for any capricious and spurious reason, which the government doesn’t even feel the need to justify.
* Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Hegsith’s Nazi tattoos apparently are totally Acceptable, and didn’t raise too many eyebrows in the Senate confirmation hearings when he was Approved by an overwhelming Majority of US Senators on both sides of the aisle. Instead they focused on more important issues, like how many ‘push-ups’ he could do. 🙄
You raise an important point about the name given to CECOT. In this moment I find your critique compelling. Thank you
It's almost like they want it to look bad.
There's plenty of prisons at home to use, why fly them to a third party?
Also, despite the courts calling this out the dictator in chief and his cronies are ignoring it.
Checks and balances was always an illusion.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/allergic-to-bullshit
Sheer laziness. It's like cops shooting people who run away from them. A fugitive does not per se pose a danger. It is those who run towards you who pose the danger. In the UK, being the author of rap lyrics has been deemed to constitute evidence of guilt for crimes associated with the sentiments expressed in the lyric.
A mere appearance of association is thus deemed sufficient to convict of criminal acts. This is entirely consistent in the US - with shooting to kill fugitives, with the notion that carrying nail clippers onto an aircraft constitutes intention to hijack it, or that anyone who wishes to hide their identity on the Internet has got something criminal that they want to hide.
It's strange that all the prior indications of what this administration would do when it acquired power were never assumed to mean that it would do exactly what it is now, in fact, doing. Perhaps the general public allows more leeway in its judgments of its government than does the government who rules them. Perhaps the general public placed excessive faith in a rule of law that is now being trampled asunder by a government that duped the general public into trusting that it, too, placed faith in that rule of law. A mountebank government.