Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from styrofoam plates “like dogs”, according to a report published on Monday into conditions at three overcrowded south Florida facilities.I recalled this when reading the following analysis from the late Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer:
The incident at the downtown federal detention center is one of a succession of alleged abuses at jails operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice) in the state since January, chronicled by the advocacy groups Human Rights Watch, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and Sanctuary of the South from interviews with detainees.
Dozens of men had been packed into a holding cell for hours, the report said, and denied lunch until about 7pm. They remained shackled with the food on chairs in front of them.
“We had to eat like animals,” one detainee named Pedro said.
Degrading treatment by guards is commonplace in all three jails, the groups say. [my emphasis] (1)
[A]lthough the Nazis did not invent the concentration camp, they developed it in new ways. Especially novel was the intricate procedure by which they deprived inmates of their "normal" human attributes by systematic humiliation, which reached its peak in their use of what may be called excretionary control - total humiliation by controlling human excretions. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this development is that, to date, no Nazi document has been found that points to a discussion of how to humiliate victims. The conclusion is inevitable: humiliation was not the result of planning but of a consensus that did not require orders or bureaucratic arrangements. In other words, probably the most extreme form of humiliation known to us was the natural result of the Nazi system. [my emphasis] (2)I don’t mean by quoting that to imply in any way that senior officials at ICE should not be held accountable for their crimes and abuses. Trump may be using that agency as a chief way of eroding the rule of law more generally. But it’s the responsibility of ICE officials up to its Director Todd Lyons and his boss Kristi Noem who thinks shooting puppies is fun to take precautions to make sure their agency isn’t committing criminal acts. And when they do, to make sure the criminals are fired from the agency and prosecuted.
I know at one level it’s laughable to say such a thing about the depraved characters running that agency. But it is their responsibility. And they should be held accountable for their lack of actions against this kind of cheap sadism. No matter how much the MAGA chuds get off hearing about it.
The Guardian report also talks about how the ICE sadists use the “excretionary control” Bauer mentions: “At the Krome North service processing center in west Miami, female detainees were made to use toilets in full view of men being held there, and were denied access to gender-appropriate care, showers or adequate food.”
And Republicans present themselves as the party of Jesus Christ. Listen and watch to see how many of the good Christian white folks in the Republican caucuses in Congress condemn this conduct. Hint: you’ll have to be very patient before you hear any of them doing that. If you’re placing bets on how many will, it would be wise not to pick a number with double digits.
But it’s not hard to say. They can simply use Sen. Markley’s phrase: “This is a violation of basic human dignity.”
But all the Republicans in Congress know that already. The question is how many of them will straightforwardly condemn this.
Notes:
(1) Luscombe, Richard (2025): Migrants at Ice jail in Miami made to kneel to eat ‘like dogs’, report alleges. Guardian 07/25/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/21/migrants-miami-ice-jail-abuses> (Accessed: 2025-25-07).
(2) Bauer, Yehuda (2001): Rethinking the Holocaust, 51. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
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