U.S. Opens New Concentration Camp for Immigrants on Texas-Mexico Border

The U.S. government gave its new children’s prison the innocuous-sounding name “South Texas Family Residential Center.” Articles in the mainstream media invariably describe its “medical care and counselors, trailer classrooms, library and email access, and a basketball court and playgrounds...”—as if the federal government contracted the infamous CCA (Corrections Corporation of America, which should more accurately be known as the Concentration Camps of Amerikkka), to build a summer camp or recreation center for poor kids. But a lawyer who has struggled to represent immigrant families held in Artesia, New Mexico, and other locations spoke to the reality of the Dilley prison: “I’m at a loss for words to imagine what Dilley will look like with so many 6-year-olds detained behind razor wire.”

The Trump/Sessions' No tolerance immigration policy sounds beyond heinous, doesn't it? But guess what? This article was written on December 22, 2014. This happened during Obama's presidency when he was deporting immigrants at a record pace. We had been told that he too would only focus on deporting immigrants who had criminal records, but 56% of those who were deported had no criminal records.

On December 14, Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, travelled to Dilley, Texas, to announce the opening of a new detention center for immigrants, primarily immigrant women and children. This new, privately run jail will immediately begin taking in prisoners and will reach its intended capacity of 2,400 prisoners by May 2015.

The new prison is opening shortly after a major change in immigration policy declared in an executive order by Obama last month. Obama’s order focused on the promise of temporary relief from deportation for some immigrants, and an escalation of harshly repressive measures along the border. (See “Obama’s Immigration Moves—and the Need for Increased Resistance” for a fuller analysis of Obama’s measures towards immigrants and the intense conflicts in the ruling class.)

The Dilley prison camp is a cornerstone of the Obama policy towards repressing immigrants and controlling the border with massive militarization. It will provide the means for expediting the deportation of captured immigrants—what one official cynically called “one-stop shopping.” Immigrant families will be caged, run through a cursory and sham legal proceeding, and deported from the same facility in a few weeks

One key aim of the aggressive moves on immigration Obama began last month has been to promote divisions among immigrants—by promising some temporary reprieve from deportation for those who qualify under government criteria to “come out of the shadows,” and even harsher repression and criminalization for those who don’t qualify. Those in the second category include people who have been in the U.S. for years and people still trying to enter el norte because of the devastation the U.S. has wreaked upon their homelands.

Obama’s Immigration Moves—and the Need for Increased Resistance

Over 10 million immigrants—people this system calls "illegal" because of where they were born—live every day of their lives with this: the awareness that their least little encounter with any authority could very quickly lead to disaster in their lives. A sword of arrest, deportation, and the threat of being torn apart from family and friends and the lives they had been struggling to make in this country hangs over the heads of immigrants constantly—this has been the reality of the lives of millions of people.
---
Other battles have erupted that both exposed and opposed the harsh, heartless treatment inflicted upon immigrants. Cruel, barren and remote detention centers for immigrant children and immigrant families have been the focus of repeated protests and lawsuits. This past summer, people in the U.S. and around the world were shocked at the overwhelming cruelty of the military, police and legal measures taken by the U.S. government to detain and prepare for likely deportation tens of thousands of impoverished, desperate children from Central America.
---
Other battles have erupted that both exposed and opposed the harsh, heartless treatment inflicted upon immigrants. Cruel, barren and remote detention centers for immigrant children and immigrant families have been the focus of repeated protests and lawsuits. This past summer, people in the U.S. and around the world were shocked at the overwhelming cruelty of the military, police and legal measures taken by the U.S. government to detain and prepare for likely deportation tens of thousands of impoverished, desperate children from Central America.
---
The hopes of many people rose during the early years of Obama's administration—hopes that the threat of deportation would end, that the basic humanity of immigrants would be recognized, that a path to some form of legal status would be opened up to people who had been in this country for years. When he was first elected president, Obama told an audience composed largely of immigrants, ""I marched with you in the streets of Chicago to meet our immigration challenge. I fought with you in the Senate for comprehensive immigration reform. And I will make it a top priority in my first year as President".

2014

History started for some when Trump became president after they spent 8 years ignoring the many heinous things that Obama did during his tenure. I call that Selective Amnesia!