I think there is a larger conversation to be had about the crass, ignorant, and dystopian "game show" style of fascism the Trump regime is installing in America; a situation perfectly exemplified by the emergency construction of a migrant concentration camp on an abandoned airfield in the Florida Everglades, affectionately marketed (with actual merchandise) as "Alligator Alcatraz." It says a lot about what lies at the rotting core of Trumpism that in the implementation of its fascist policies, the regime always finds a way to surpass satirists in Hollywood and the fever dreams of authors like Hunter S. Thompson, in terms of theatrical cruelty, open greed, and complete disregard for human decency. As such, I understand why the outrage in response to the construction and implementation of what amounts to a dollar store knock off version of torture prisons like CECOT, has been focused on the outrageous pageantry Downmarket Mussolini, Ronny DeSantis, and the American fascist movement are engaged in to cover up the fact that we've just build a domestic "Gitmo" and the guy running it is a former Bush War on Terror lawyer with a very checkered past on the subjects of human rights and torture.
The reality however is that "Alligator Alcatrez" (that is the official name of the gulag) is very clearly a concentration camp, designed to torture migrants as part of a slow-motion ethnic cleansing project to whiten the demographics of the USA. Furthermore, the evidence that this is so goes far beyond Trump's obscene comments about alligators eating escaped migrants, as Florida Republicans have openly touted the idea that exposure to hurricanes might make migrants self-deport to avoid being sent there - which a responsible media would recognize as US politicians arguing "death by hurricane" is an acceptable punishment for the civil violation of being in the country without papers. In fact, this alarming idea is literally baked into the second half of the dungeon's name; Alcatraz was a maximum security federal prison ostensibly designed to house "the worst felons in America," while Alligator Alcatraz is a giant torture cage for brown people on the wrong side of an imaginary line - the conflation is intentional on the part of the fascist politicians behind this monstrous scheme.
Given the clear intentions behind opening our very own concentration camp in the Florida Everglades, the men behind the plan, and their open statements about why Alligator Alcatraz was built, it shouldn't surprise anyone that we're already getting reports of widespread human rights violations out of the facility.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/alligator-alcatraz-human-rights
'A Form of Torture': Detainees Allege Mistreatment at 'Alligator Alcatraz'
"They're not respecting our human rights," one detainee told CBS News Miami during a phone interview. "We're human beings; we're not dogs. We're like rats in an experiment."
"I don't know their motive for doing this, if it's a form of torture," he added. "A lot of us have our residency documents and we don't understand why we're here."
Another inmate, the Cuban reggaeton artist Leamsy La Figura, said guards "only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots."
"They never take off the lights for 24 hours," he claimed. "The mosquitoes are as big as elephants," and "there's no water to take a bath, it's been four days since I've taken a bath."
A Colombian detainee said his mental health is breaking down.
"I'm on the edge of losing my mind. I've gone three days without taking my medicine," he said. "It's impossible to sleep with this white light that's on all day."
"They took the Bible I had and they said here there is no right to religion," the detainee added. "And my Bible is the one thing that keeps my faith, and now I'm losing my faith."
So, let's be clear what we're talking about here. The fascist Florida government purposely built a concentration camp in the middle of a hurricane alley swamp, to facilitate the fascist Trump regime's ethnic cleansing project. And now, we're treating people who may be guilty of nothing more than a civil violation like War on Terror prisoners at Gitmo. We've had entire hearings about the effects of restricting access to food, shower facilities, and medicine because this is what our government did to suspected terrorists during the one of the darkest moments of modern American history. We know leaving the lights on 24/7 to deny prisons adequate rest and a sense of passing time is a type of torture because we purposely did that "to root out Al-Qaeda." You know who else knows? Ron fucking DeSantis, the former Bush era JAG who worked AT Gitmo.
In other words? We have built a concentration camp for brown people and we are now intentionally torturing them. In the United States of America. While bragging about it and selling T-shirts to celebrate it. Tell me again why it's wrong to compare Trump's new America to Nazi Germany?
