Concentration camps are often compared to prisons, but that comparison is inaccurate. In the United States, inmates arrive in penitentiaries only after they have been convicted of serious crimes, under criminal processes constrained by the US Constitution at all times. Starting with probable cause (which brown skin is not); then arrest (you have the right to remain silent); followed by voluntary pleading (coerced confessions are thrown out); leading to formal trial (bench or jury, defendants’ choice), based only on admissible evidence (hearsay/unsupported opinions are not admissible), Constitutional constraints apply at every juncture. If they falter, appellate courts are watching.
While innocent people assuredly have been wrongly convicted since our penal system was created in the late 1700s, their wrongful convictions were not produced by system design. Before Trump, wrongful, sloppy, or vengeance-driven criminal convictions of the innocent were the product of flawed men, not a flawed system.
People in concentration camps, in contrast, reflect an illegal system. The crucial distinction between prison and concentration camps is that concentration camp detainment is independent of any judicial review; inmates in camps have not been convicted of any crime. Concentration camps are most often used for political reasons, or to incarcerate people whom the governing regime sees as a threat.
A sinful celebration of cruelty
Rounded up under maniacal whims of an autocrat, concentration camp inmates don’t represent the rule of law, they represent an autocrat’s lust for power. This week, Donald Trump, accompanied by grinning ghouls Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis, toured their newest and cruelest toy to date, Alligator Alcatraz, where they laughed in anticipation of the upcoming cruelty.
Because the people headed there have not been convicted of any crime, the facility is a concentration camp. It consists of metal cages surrounded by tents, with no air conditioning and no shade, in the heat of the Florida Everglades where temperatures have reached 107° F. By design, the tents will trap and exacerbate these pre-existing heat levels. The only way to escape is by wading through alligator and Burmese python-infested swamps.
This level of cruelty by design is new to America, even as Fox News celebrates it, and Trump laughs about it. Father Federico Capdepón, a retired priest from the nearby Miami Archdiocese who is monitoring the situation, describes both the camp and the inhumanity it reflects, as, quite simply, “sinful.” The six Catholic justices who paved the way for Trump’s cruelty must know that their complicity is an assault on the teachings of Christ.
The Catholic majority on the High Court paved the way
Contrary to Trump’s misinformation spread on the hour by Fox News, multiple studiesshow that immigrants, whether documented or not, account for disproportionately low crime. The most recent nationwide data show that only 3% of people who are jailed are non-US citizens, even though that group comprises over 14% of the population.
Supreme Court justices are aware of these statistics, just as they are cognizant of the sinister methods Trump has cooked up to dismantle the Constitution. At least 192 judicial rulings have blocked or paused Trump’s initiatives, while the Supreme Court itself has conducted multiple reviews of Trump’s Executive Orders. And yet, informed by the gross inhumanity and illegality of Trump’s official actions to date, on June 27, the court outlawednationwide injunctive relief, the main tool available to protect people from Trump’s lawless cruelty.
Three days later, Trump celebrated the opening of Alligator Alcatraz, with the promise of more to come.
SCOTUS chose the worst possible time to disarm federal judges
Judges of all stripes have argued both for and against nationwide injunctive relief; the merits of those arguments are worthy of careful review. Who can forget rightwing Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issuing an injunction during the Biden administration to try to outlaw the contraceptive mifepristone on a nationwide basis?
SCOTUS dismissed the mifepristone case because anti-abortion doctors did not have standing to bring their challenge. But the court left the tool Kacsmaryk used, the nationwide injunction, undisturbed. The Supreme Court’s republican majority could have blocked all nationwide injunctions then—in response to a federal judge so clearly trying to write new federal law— but did not. The Court also allowed a nationwide injunction against Biden’s student loan forgiveness, then struck the loan forgiveness on the merits without addressing injunctive relief.
Choosing to end nationwide injunctions now, despite Trump’s cruel, dangerous, and despotic agenda, while they allowed nationwide injunctions under Biden, leaves an inescapable whiff of partisan stench.
It also imparts the stench of immorality. Republicans on the high court have empowered a rogue president of dubious sanityafter Trump’s DOJ disobeyed federal court orders, including their own; after he sent military troops to LA to intimidatepeaceful protestors; after he punished law firms for protected political speech; after he attacked American universities; and after they’ve watched Trump tighten his unconstitutional grip on freedoms of the press. They also disarmed federal judges after giving Trump nearly carte blanche immunity to break criminal laws.
How will the Roberts Court defend Trump’s alligator cruelty?
The Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, does not just apply to US citizens. It applies to everyone within the United States, regardless of their immigration status, which means an 8th A case from the Florida Everglades will eventually reach SCOTUS. One dreads the verbal gymnastics the majority will employ to defend cooking migrants alive, or feeding them to alligators, as something other than cruel and unusual.
One year ago, on July 1, 2024, the same republican supermajority ended the foundational premise of our nation: that no one is above the law. I imagined then that the rule of law had run its course in the US. If Trump is above the law, there is no limit to what he will do to stay in power, and there is no shortage of lackeys who will enable him to share in that power. Apprehending and detaining political enemies could soon become Trump’s ‘national security’ agenda; no doubt, Trump’s trillion dollar military budget will come in handy for that purpose.
In the meantime, maybe each new Alligator Alcatraz can be named for the six high court Catholics who paved its way. Perhaps the cruelest sites, where ICE henchmen feed detainees’ body parts to pythons for fun, can be reserved for Thomas and Alito.
What will become of this country because SCOTUS first immunized a criminal president, then disarmed federal judges to protect him, remains to be seen. But what the court has done to defend and thereby enable Trump’s cruelty is un-American, unprecedented, and vile.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.