77 Comments
User's avatar
hcmBoston's avatar

Thank you for this, though some of us (particularly those who are Jewish or Japanese and who carry their history through generations) have been very aware of this. Communities are fighting back but, what we really need to do it to pressure the GOP to stop funding all of this. That's a huge task. The damage we are causing, both to ourselves and to the rest of the world, because of the actions of this administration is terrifying. I wake up with a knot in my stomach every single day.

Gordon Marlatt's avatar

Sarah Palin accused the Democrats of wanting to build concentration camps 'for your mothers' when she was the vice president nominee. Now the republicans are doing just that. It seems that everything the republicans say is projection of what hey want to do or are doing.

The Contrarian's avatar

Project and then cry foul. It is a GOP tried and true game plan.

Joanne M Guild's avatar

Feb. 17th - From ML - "Morning Briefing: An aerial image of the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Mich. is the largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in the Midwest. With 1,800 beds, it's owned and operated by GEO Group, a private prison company that landed a federal contract to reopen the former prison in 2025. It's the only for-profit, private immigration detention center in Michigan. (Joel Bissell | MLive.com)

A private prison company that operates the largest immigration detention center in Michigan saw its profits climb, even as stocks tumbled, under President Donald Trump’s effort to detain and deport millions of immigrants.

GEO Group reported $254 million in profits – up from nearly $32 million in 2024 – after it secured new federal contracts and opened four new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, detention facilities throughout the country.

Yet, the company’s stock prices slumped by roughly 13% on Thursday, Feb. 12 as it fell short of forecasts and its leadership changed.

Despite the mixed financial picture, GEO Group CEO George Zoley told investors during a Thursday call that its new contracts could bring in $520 million a year, marking the “largest amount of new business we have won in a single year.”"

Steve 218's avatar

If privatizing prisons doesn't look like something foul, what does? Profit will come before prisoner welfare every time. Greed has no moral compass.

susan gentleman's avatar

Thanks for the information. Actual facts supporting the conclusion are welcome. The whole scene by our government in this is appalling.

Sandra's avatar

Thank you for this. Puzzling, however: "the (djt staff's) efforts to detain and deport millions.." Did you also mean, 'deport to US prison camps'..

..and thank you, too -- to the reference to "new business" in MN: this would mean **employment opportunities**..

Is there nothing from the Hitler and Putin notebooks that's been missed?

Missing Phillip Roth's voice -- no, wait -- he wrote a book about this very scenario!

Charles Welsh's avatar

Obvious cruelty is the point of these places, designed for intimidation and suppression. It is logical that sickness and death would follow, whether by conscious design or as a simple result of their implementation. They all must be closed and those who opened and run them prosecuted.

Signe K.'s avatar

It seems they are designed for death, fueled by the anti-"other" hatred of the ChristoNazi empire running the US these days. Inadequate food, water, sanitation, medical attention -- that all results in illness and death, at all ages. It is an absolute stain on the US. Look what we have become...

Sandra's avatar

Absolutely..

Stephen Brady's avatar

It’s evil, cruel, sadistic, and at its heart, psychopathic. Just what we’ve come to expect from the tRump regime. And has a one of them given a moment’s thought to what deporting millions of people who do useful work will do to the economy? Of course not! Fanatics don’t care, as long as they get their pound of flesh.

Robert Lastick's avatar

Autocratic Fascism, Stephan.

Cruelty, evil, & Psychotic arrogance is "the bread and butter" of the autocratic Fascist.

Steve 218's avatar

My French is rusty after 60 years away from the classroom, though that seems to translate to 'that goes without saying', which is accurate.

Stephen Brady's avatar

I can still read it after 50 years since college French, but I can speak very little.

Larry Wegrzyn's avatar

It is very clear from all the Project 2025 planning and successes that soon anyone who disagrees with the corrupt government will be put in detention. And probably killed after a certain duration - like Soylent Green. We need ethical lawyers and politicians to save us - if there are any. We need to stop ICE, Palantir, Corecivic and Geogroup before they get to execute further Project 2025 plans. It looks like the KGB playbook. ICE is attacking Vermont now

Robert Lastick's avatar

You are stone cold RIGHT, Larry.

But I fear it is way too late for "ethical lawyers and politicians to save us". ICE, Palantir, Corecivic and Geogroup have this insurrection all planed out well.

First, we need to address the two heads of Project 2025 AND we need to get organized to stop this take over.

We need to do this now!

richard horan's avatar

How is this possible? How are our legislators allowing this to happen? Why is the Supreme Court not intervening? Why aren't lower courts involved? Why are our military leaders okay with this? Why aren't our law enforcement agencies involved in keeping people safe? And how the Hell is Stephen Miller even remotely involved in this brutality? His own relatives died in the Holocaust? How could this happen in the United States? What kind of sick, sadistic, immoral element in our government allows this unconscionable inhumanity to continue uncontested? I am so ashamed and so horrified and so angry; there are no words to describe the sick, nauseating contempt I feel for those involved in this horror.

pmpmpm's avatar

Americans have taken their democracy for granted and are now paying that price.

60%+ of Americans are obese and rather than eat less and exercise more they look for a pill.

We need to become adults again and say no to liars...

Herbert Thomas's avatar

"Since the 1890's"? "The Navajo Trail of Tears, known as the Long Walk of the Navajo (Diné), was the 1864–1866 forced removal of over 10,000 Navajo and Mescalero Apaches by the U.S. Army. People were marched 250–450 miles from Arizona/New Mexico to the barren Bosque Redondo reservation, at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, resulting in hundreds of deaths from exposure, starvation, and violence." (Source: primarily the National Museum of the American Indian, plus a personal visit to Fort Sumner.)

David Burica's avatar

You don't need to be an expert to know the answer.

Robert Manz's avatar

No words. Just no words.

Janet Muchnik's avatar

Of course these are concentration camps. And they look even worse than the camps built for the Japanese because the people are contained in small cells all day. This will go down in history as one of the most horrible things a country can do to people,especially since most of these people came here seeking sanctuary.

Steve 218's avatar

Many have committed no crime; all are deprived of due process. This makes it even worse.

F Selker's avatar
6hEdited

Great observations and commentary, as usual.

For modern and ironic context, Gaza is another literal, modern concentration camp.

Jason's avatar

When so many wonder how to US can be so cruel to immigrants in the country, or how it could kill thousands of civilians in Iran without batting an eye. all one needs to do is look at what the US and its BFF have done in Gaza.

It's a crime beyond words, and one that is still going on every day.

Robot Bender's avatar

I think the next step for the camps is to turn them into work camps like the Nazis did. More profit.

Steve 218's avatar

From the Internet: "Yes, people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers often work, typically performing duties to maintain the facility such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, and gardening."

Any work that they do reduces overhead, thus increasing profit for the concentration camp ownership.

Robot Bender's avatar

I'm thinking more of work for the investor's profit for outside businesses.

Steve 218's avatar

Don't give the owners/investors any ideas. Add sweat-shop piecework type labor to prisoner requirements - it could be next.

Elizabeth Horton's avatar

They should refuse. Are they slaves?

Steve 218's avatar

Prisoners (that's what they are) do what the guards tell them to do. Those who do not suffer consequences and may come to a bad end. Sometimes, when there are no protections, one does what they have to to stay alive.

Kevin Dale Green's avatar

We need close all but one of these camps. We'll need some place to house the members of this administration once we regain control of the government.

Mary Feliz's avatar

The descriptions of the camps include those that will “house” 10,000 people in chain-link bunk houses inside existing warehouses. How many warehouse-districts do you know that are built in areas zoned for that many people?

That’s my polite way of saying that none of the folks who are planning to cram thousands of people into these camps have thought about the intricacies of waste processing, nor what the impact of that will be on existing (and aging) municipal sewage systems.

None of the people planning these mega camps are plopping them down in their own back yards. In other words, they are planning on leaving the rest of us holding the bag (of shit).

Either these facilities will overwhelm existing sewage systems shared by industry and private housing OR new sewage will need to be built. EVEN IF they only use porta-potties, the sewage has to be treated somewhere.

And no one is planning for it. No one in charge has any experience or expertise and most of the civilian underlings who did have been fired.

This is a health crisis and an environmental crisis that will effect us all personally, and require billions of dollars in cleanup. Yes, it’s a humanitarian crisis, but sometimes people who poo-poo a humanitarian crisis will pay more attention if they realize the shit will literally stick to them (and they’ll be wading through it.)

ANN LAUBACH's avatar

The Nazi death toll was more like 6 million Jews and 15-20 million people in total.

The Contrarian's avatar

Hi Anna, that is correct. The sentence "evoke the horrors of Hitler and of facilities like Auschwitz, where more than 1 million people were murdered by the Nazis" is referring to Auschwitz specifically, where the estimated death count is over 1 million. He is not referring to estimates of the Holocaust.