Admitted dog-murderer Kristi Noem, the most apt choice to be Donald Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, traveled to El Salvador Wednesday and toured the supermax megaprison where the US has shipped more than 200 migrants without due process. Noem was there to amp up the hype over the unconstitutional deportation program, which rests on the insane fiction that the USA is literally at war with a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), which Trump declared a “terrorist” organization, although it’s a criminal prison gang with no political agenda. Not that words mean anything.
In mere reality, it turns out that many of those deported are probably not dangerous gang members but were rounded up from ICE detention facilities because they had tattoos and nobody in the administration really made any effort to verify that they really were in gangs. At least two of the men sent to the prison were legal refugees, and some may not even be Venezuelan, but little details like that don’t matter when Trump is hell-bent on becoming a fascist strongman like the world leaders he most admires.
Noem visited the prison, which is notorious for human rights abuses, to make a show of how the administration is keeping Americans safe from people it’s calling “terrorists” and “vicious criminals.” She refused to directly answer reporters’ questions about whether the deportees would be left in the Salvadoran prison indefinitely, or if the US would comply if a court ordered some or all be brought back to the US for proper court hearings. The most she would say was that “We’re going to let the courts play out.”
Then it came time for Noem to make a brief propaganda video for Twitter in which she stood in front of a caged group of men who weren’t US deportees at all. As CBS News reports, the video was recorded in front of a cell block holding Salvadoran prisoners, who were ordered by guards to take off their shirts so everyone could see their scary tattoos, some with “the letters MS, for the Mara Salvatrucha gang, on their chests.” Noem had already briefly visited another cell block holding the US deportees, who were allowed to keep their T-shirts on.
Did Noem bother mentioning that in the video? Why would she? The stagecraft is what matters when you’re doing propaganda, after all. These were gangbangers, and the US says the people it sent to the prison were gangbangers, so where’s the lie? Oh, all of it? But it made for such a riveting video!
Here’s the short video, which again, has Salvadoran gang members standing in for the people deported by the US. It’s disgusting.
Noem’s hair was perfectly coifed, and like any old-fashioned dictator wannabe might, she flaunted what sharp-eyed internet people identified as a $60,000 gold Rolex Daytona wristwatch. And standing there in front of Salvadoran prisoners used as props, she thanked the Salvadoran government briefly for helping out by imprisoning “terrorists,” and the lies went on from there.
Noem claimed that the deportees were there to “have consequences for the violence that they have perpetuated in our communities,” although the government has refused to actually say what it’s accusing the detainees of. Just being violent terrorists of course, and why would anyone object to imprisoning violent terrorists? Then Noem got to the real tough talk warning that was the entire reason for the stunt, explaining,
“I want everybody to know that if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences that you could face. First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”
Or at least, if you are in the US without papers, or with them, you can be disappeared to a foreign prison without due process, because the US president hopes the Supreme Court will let him do it. And our government will lie about you and say you’re a terrorist without ever bothering to offer any proof, because we are done with following the law and would rather make America so hellish that no one will want to come here.
We will accuse you of being a gang member if you’re a soccer fan, or have a tattoo for autism awareness. Or if you have a tattoo of a hummingbird. We will lie about you and say you are paying for horrendous crimes we don’t have to specify, because this is America and we don’t think laws should apply to people we don’t want here. We will laugh at your claims of qualifying for asylum, because we decided we don’t care about that anymore. If you have jumped through all the hoops to “do it legally, the right way,” we’ll still hate you and deport you because we bet you were lying.
If you’ve been here legally since you were seven years old, we’ll call you a terrorist and deport you, or if you’re an international student here on a valid visa and you write an editorial stating the wrong thing, we’ll send masked secret police to snatch you off the street. Oh! And if you’re one of the two latter types of lucky Desaparecidos, maaaaybe you’ll only be deported and not sent to a prison far beyond the US justice system, such as it is.
And if you’re an American citizen who’s fucking fed up with all this fascism, you’d better get active, join others, and get onto the streets before Trump comes for you, because he’s already fantasizing about it. If you’re an elected Democrat, you’d better stop simply being concerned and act like democracy is in danger, because it is.
If you’re unsure where this could lead, the last century of world history has far too many examples that you should be paying attention to.
[CBS News / Bulwark / Daily Beast / Mother Jones]
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