[D66] Concentration camps in America

[A.O.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/06/25/pers-j25.html

Concentration camps in America
25 June 2018

A Navy memo released Friday reveals that the government is planning to
build a network of “austere” concentration camps to house 120,000 people
across the United States. The proposal is yet another milestone in the
breakdown of democracy and drive toward dictatorship.

The Navy plan includes the establishment of two massive camps in
California, each holding 47,000 people, one outside the San Francisco
Bay Area and another between Los Angeles and San Diego—areas with large
working-class immigrant populations. The camps will be sufficiently
close to these major urban areas to facilitate mass deportations and
military interference in the state government.

The Navy memo has been largely ignored by the corporate media. On the
Sunday morning talk shows, none of the talking heads or political
guests, Democratic or Republican, made mention of the military plans,
limiting their comments to hypocritical appeals for a “more humane”
removal of undocumented immigrants.

In another display of contempt for constitutional principles and legal
due process, President Donald Trump continued spouting his fascist filth
yesterday, tweeting: “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our
Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or
Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a
mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”

There are still 2,053 locked-up children who have been separated from
their parents. Social workers say the immigrant children have become
“eerily silent,” are “hearing voices,” and in their desperation
physically cling to any adult.

The administration also announced that immigrant parents will not be
reunited with their children until the conclusion of deportation
proceedings—a process that can take months or even years. If parents
wish to see their children sooner, they will have to abandon asylum
claims and agree to voluntarily return to the persecution, violence and
war that they risked their lives to flee. Many parents have already been
deported and do not know how to reach their children.

The Democratic Party’s response is a combination of fecklessness and
rank hypocrisy. Democratic representatives have issued statements
calling the family separation policy “cruel” and “inhumane” in an effort
to posture as pro-immigrant for the 2018 midterm elections. The New York
Times attempted to whitewash the Democrats’ own responsibility for the
attack on immigrants in an editorial yesterday titled, “How the GOP
Built Donald Trump’s Cages.”

The Times states that while Republicans “play to their base’s darker
impulses,” the Democratic Party under Barack Obama “took a run at
reform” and “enraged conservatives” by “expanding deportation
deferments.” It is the Republicans, the Times claims, who have “done so
much to pave the way for Mr. Trump and his immigration policies.”

In reality, Barack Obama deported 2.7 million people, more than any
other president, and his administration expanded the border wall and
built many of the for-profit prisons currently housing immigrant
children, literally paving the way for Trump’s present policy.

Particularly significant has been the response of Senator Bernie
Sanders. Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program, Sanders
volunteered that he had voted to fund Trump’s border wall.

When asked directly if he was in favor of abolishing Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that is overseeing the
Gestapo-like attack on immigrants, Sanders gave a deliberately evasive
answer, declaring: “I think what we need is to create policies which
deal with immigration in a rational way. … What we need is Trump to sit
down with members of Congress and work on a rational program which deals
with this serious issue.”

This is a capitulation to Trump’s anti-immigrant program. A “rational”
immigration plan, in the eyes of the Democrats and Sanders, is one that
jails or deports millions of immigrants, fortifies the border with
military technology, and forces thousands of refugees fleeing poverty
and violence to die in the desert. It is a euphemism for speeding up the
deportation machine and expanding the powers of ICE and the Customs and
Border Protection stormtroopers.

Opposition to Trump’s attack on immigrants continues to grow, with
demonstrations in dozens of cities nationwide scheduled for the coming
days and weeks. This opposition requires a clear political focus and policy.

The attack on immigrants both in the US and internationally must be
recognized as a vast exercise in scapegoating the most oppressed in
order to divert attention from the real cause of poverty and inequality:
the capitalist system. The claim that immigrants are to blame for
declining living conditions is a lie.

The Democratic Party must be recognized as no less responsible than the
Republicans for the attack on immigrants and the growing threat posed by
the military to democratic rights. Democrats voted overwhelmingly last
week for an appropriations bill that increases the military budget by
$82 billion and grants Trump the power to stage a military parade in
Washington, DC.

For the first two years of the Trump administration, the Democrats have
sought to divert and dissipate opposition to Trump’s anti-immigrant
policies and channel it behind their warmongering anti-Russia campaign,
attacking anyone who criticizes the military-intelligence agencies
leading the investigation.

The social force that can and must halt the drive toward dictatorship is
the working class, the central target of the assault on democratic
rights. Through the Trump administration, the military is asserting an
ever-greater role in domestic politics. Trump’s attack on immigrants
provides the military with a cover to prepare the infrastructure for
cracking down on strikes and opposition to war and inequality.

The mobilization of the working class must take place in opposition to
the Democratic Party, Sanders and his backers in the Democratic
Socialists of America, other pseudo-left organizations and the trade
unions. It requires the establishment of neighborhood and workplace
committees to organize the resistance of family, neighbors, friends and
co-workers when any immigrant is under threat of deportation.

The Socialist Equality Party demands:

• The immediate release of all children detained in the United States,
as well as all immigrants detained in camps and detention centers around
the world.

• The abolition of the American Gestapo—Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

• Active noncooperation with the deportation machine.

• Immediate amnesty for all immigrants without papers in the United
States and guarantees of the right to travel and work.

• The provision of trillions of dollars in public services and job
training programs to all workers, immigrant and non-immigrant alike.
There is enough wealth and room for all.

Socialists reject the assertion that there is a “rational” way to block
the tens of millions of people escaping imperialist war and poverty from
seeking safe refuge. It is a fundamental contradiction of the capitalist
system that workers and the poor are beaten, jailed or killed for the
“crime” of crossing a border while the world’s currency speculators,
stock traders and corporate executives carry out their swindles at the
click of a button and on a global scale.

Socialism and nationalism are mutually exclusive. The revolutionary task
of expropriating the wealth of the rich and placing the world’s
productive forces at the disposal of the working class can be completed
only by abolishing borders and bringing the world’s political map into
harmony with the international character of the process of production.

Under socialism, the working class will have both the material resources
and the legal right to travel anywhere in the world free from
harassment, detention or deportation. It is necessary to unite workers
of all races and nationalities in a common international struggle for
socialist revolution.

Eric London