Attacks on migrants under Trump will be remembered as America's loss of humanity

Statue of Liberty attacked by alligators

Lady Liberty should be shedding tears of bewilderment and despair at the inhumane and probably unconstitutional treatment of migrants under this Administration. Then again, it’s probably just a matter of time before the Statue of Liberty herself is hauled off Liberty Island and dumped on a flight bound for prison in El Salvador, South Sudan or another country she had no connection to.

This is what we’ve come to. Instead of her famously inscribed entreaty to countries to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,” we’re shipping people we’ve deemed aliens off to detention centers in countries they have no connection to and we can’t regulate conditions in. Or President Trump boasts about the new Alligator Alcatraz detention center in Florida’s Everglades, where migrants who try to escape can be eaten by alligators.

His administration’s moves to lock up, dehumanize, deport and in cases physically overpower migrants, some of whom committed no crime other than being here without papers, should go down in history as a national disgrace - a time when America lost its humanity.

It's not just the swiftness and bravado with which Trump set about fulfilling a campaign promise to purge foreign-born people — including those who fled poverty or persecution, and work at jobs Americans shun but businesses depend on. His administration did a rapid about-face after the President declared in Des Moines July 3 that farmers would be left in charge of immigrant employees "…because we don’t want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms." Now his team is declaring “No amnesty.”

It’s not just the unprecedented $170 billion he’s budgeted for immigration enforcement and border security. Or the nearly 60,000 migrants ICE has rounded up around the U.S. since he took over - nearly half of those with no criminal records. It’s what we’re doing with them rather than passing a comprehensive immigration reform law that could speed up the process to get legal status.

The government wants to hold them in private for-profit jails, which get funding in Trump's budget. One such place proposed is a private prison in Leavenworth Kansas owned by CoreCivic, and vacant since 2021. The city of Leavenworth is pushing back, calling it “an absolute hell hole.” Maybe just a hair above the Alligator Alcatraz, it was the subject of a Scripps News Service investigation. That says something about how much the administration cares about migrants’ wellbeing.

Then there are the foreign prisons. Eight Iowa migrants with criminal records were among those deported to a South Sudan prison in what a federal judge ruled violated a court order requiring they be given a chance to contest being sent to countries where they’re not citizens. But the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing it while litigation plays out in lower courts.

This is a major departure from recognized deportation policy and international and U.S. law, as described in a dissenting opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and two others. It cites the 1984 international Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the U.S. is a signatory. That prohibits returning any person “to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing “the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Congress in 1998 passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act to implement those commands. That, Sotomayor wrote, “sharply limited” third-party removals to when there was no other alternative. And noncitizens facing removal of any sort, she wrote, are entitled under international and domestic law to raise claims about fears of torture.

Torture. We’re willing to send people into places where they could be tortured?

Well, yes. The Trump administration was ordered to bring back Kilmar Abrego García, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador despite a court order prohibiting it because of that possibility. It eventually did.

But before they even get to prison, there’s the entrapment of migrants who come to court for scheduled hearings on asylum cases. They’re rescheduled for lack of translators but on the way out, find themselves thrown to the ground by masked men and taken into captivity.

That happened in New York the day before Independence Day, when asylum-seekers, in court for scheduled hearings, were given new dates and then arrested as they left. New York State Assembly Member Grace Lee was there, and described what she witnessed as “deeply alarming” in a written statement:

A plainclothes officer wearing a Nike cap grabbed one of two West African immigrants, and pushed him to a uniformed U.S. Border Patrol agent wearing a ski mask, who led him into a stairwell. Another masked agent grabbed the second man, held his hands behind his back and rushed him down the hall to the same staircase and out of sight.

Several new directives from the Department of Homeland Security allow ICE officers to conduct enforcement actions in or around courthouses when they have “credible information” that targeted aliens will be there. Those people were there for court hearings.

“This is not justice,” Lee wrote. “These courts are functioning as traps. Immigrants are being denied basic due process — the right to counsel, to present evidence and to have their claims heard. What is happening is unconstitutional, unlawful and un-American.”

It sure sounds that way. Others there to support them, including elected officials, have also been targeted. New York City comptroller Brad Lander was arrested at Manhattan’s immigration court in June, while escorting asylum seekers out of their appointments when federal agents began arresting them.

“We’re a far better country than what we’re experiencing,” Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters after the incident. “This is New York, land of immigrants. We’re proud of them.”

Across the country in Los Angeles last month, the Senate’s first elected Latino member - Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California – was nabbed by agents during an FBI news conference. He was taken to the ground and handcuffed after interrupting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with a question about anti-ICE protesters.

It’s worth noting that in calling for the largest mass deportation program in history, Trump instructed immigration officials to prioritize Democratic-run cities.

In downtown L.A. late last month, as unidentified agents detained street vendors, witnesses started filming them and shouting at the officers. One of those was 23-year-old Luis Hipolito, a U.S. citizen. Videos caught four masked, plainclothes agents spraying him in the eyes, pushing him to the ground and piling on him, one with his arm around Hipolito’s neck. When they later pulled him up, he reportedly convulsed, shook violently and appeared to be having a seizure.

One bystander yelled, “You gonna let him die?”

He survived. But it may be just a matter of time before someone doesn’t.

There are broader issues like Trump’s now-on-hold effort to end the constitutional grant of birthright citizenship (my sister has that), or to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans (I’m one). But this isn’t policy we’re talking about. It’s persecution and it stinks of prejudice: The masked ICE agents, the near street-level brutality used on migrants going to court to share fears of torture at home. The unforgivable way this administration is working to convince Americans that migrants and their families are less than human, unworthy of our empathy or respect or a chance to pursue the American dream.

If it isn’t stopped soon, if we don’t all demand an end to it, it will leave a lasting stain on America.

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