The Supreme Court just made it so that you can no longer look away

The Supreme Court ruled last week that Trump can continue to break the law — both US and international law — by having his secret police agents snatch people off American streets, “disappear” them into immigration prisons, then deport them to foreign concentration camps.

Lacking national injunctions, this cruel and inhumane process can now only be stopped one person at a time, one court at a time, at least until the six Republicans on the Court get around to deciding a person’s fate. And they’re now on vacation until October.

Students of history like Jim Stewartson have seen this movie before.

When the Enabling Acts gave the Hitler regime the power to arrest people and disappear them into concentration camps or worse without judicial oversight, Heinrich Himmler came up with what he thought was a neat way to deal with political dissidents: “Night and Fog.”

Nacht und Nebel was designed to instill such terror among the occupied population that it would cause people who might otherwise protest the Nazis violations of law and human rights to self-censor and remain quiet. As Himmler himself wrote:

“The Führer is of the opinion that in such cases penal servitude or even a hard labor sentence for life will be regarded as a sign of weakness. An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only by the death penalty or by taking measures which will leave the family and the population uncertain as to the fate of the offender. Deportation … serves this purpose.”

Field Marshall Keitel was equally enthusiastic, writing:

“Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal. The prisoners are, in future, to be transported … secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place here; these measures will have a deterrent effect because: A. The prisoners will vanish without a trace. B. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.”

Pee Wee German may well have studied this history, as it appears the US deportation schemes to foreign hellholes like El Salvador and South Sudan are explicitly designed to produce terror among brown-skinned immigrants.

The group Human Rights First documented how “disappearances” are one of the main weapons being used by ICE to spread terror in immigrant communities:

“The Trump administration has used a pattern of disappearances to detain, remove, and expel people to countries which are not their countries of origin, and for which no removal proceedings have been conducted nor the required fear screenings. These actions are part of a broader effort to subvert due process and the checks and balances that are central to the U.S. Constitution.“Among those impacted in these first few months of the administration have been countless asylum seekers, including people fleeing persecution by repressive governments, religious-based persecution, anti-LGBTQI attacks, and other harms.”

As Teresa Reyes-Flores of the Southeast Dignity not Detention Coalition told the National Immigration Project:

“ICE’s actions show a blatant violation of due process and basic human rights. The families were disappeared, cut off from their lawyers and loved ones, and rushed to be deported, stripping their parents of the chance to protect their U.S. citizen children.”

Similarly, Fatima Khan of the Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants noted:

“ICE’s actions today go far past the typical inhumanity of their detention operations in Louisiana. They ignored their own protocols on legal access and protecting children’s rights to enact an expedient deportation they know to be unlawful. Not only that, they disappeared these families before any U.S. Court could stand up for its children. We should all be mortified.”

Congresswoman and former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (and regular guest on my radio/TV program) Pramila Jayapal chaired a meeting of the Immigration, Enforcement, and Security Subcommitte titled Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Lawless Third Country Disappearances

As you may expect, it featured testimony about people snatched by face-hidden thugs who were simply never heard from again.

Emily Witt documents for The New Yorker:

“More than 500 people are believed to have been detained, many disappearing without trace for days or being quickly transported out of state.”

It is deeply troubling that immigration enforcement in the United States has reached a point where officials from the Trump administration openly advocated for tactics resembling forced disappearances that have characterized history’s most obscene fascist regimes.

Reports from civil rights groups and journalists have documented instances where individuals were taken off the streets or from their homes without warning, transferred out of state, and left incommunicado from legal counsel or family for extended periods. These actions were not isolated errors: they are deliberate strategies aimed at instilling fear across immigrant communities, particularly those made up of Black and brown people.

What makes this moment even more alarming is the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that strips lower courts of the authority to halt deportations or removals, no matter how unlawful or abusive. With judicial oversight diminished, there is a clear and present danger that enforcement powers could be used arbitrarily and punitively.

The use of fear — rather than law — as a governing principle corrodes the foundation of due process and equal protection under the Constitution. Nonetheless, Border Czar Tom Holman bragged:

“Illegal immigrants should be afraid.”

History has shown us that when any government exercises the power to make people “disappear” as a tactic of social control, it opens the door to authoritarianism. The moral test of a democracy is how it treats its most vulnerable, not how aggressively it punishes them. In light of this ruling, resistance may now fall on the shoulders of citizens, legal advocates, and local governments to uphold basic rights that the federal system appears increasingly willing to ignore.

We cannot look away. Particularly since six Republicans on the Supreme Court just abdicated their responsibility to enforce the law and the Constitution, this is the moment to stand up, speak out, and organize.

Call your members of Congress and demand legislation that restores judicial oversight and protects due process for all people, regardless of immigration status.

Support organizations on the ground providing legal aid and sanctuary. Show up at protests, city council meetings, and community gatherings to bear witness and push back.

And most importantly, vote — up and down the ballot — for leaders who believe that America should be a nation of laws, not of fear. If we fail to resist now, we risk becoming a country where the knock at the door in the middle of the night is no longer the stuff of history books, but a lived reality for anybody who dares speak out against Trump and his thugs.