The problem with "Mass Deportations"

The person who asked about why I think the plans for "mass deportations" are like the Nazi plans for the Jews agrees that the idea is meritless and impractical. It's always nice to have some common ground. 

First, some talk about how the right has been whipping up anti-immigration sentiment. Since Trump rode his stupid escalator and made his announcement to run, we have been subjected to an unending assault on the concept of immigration, to the point it's gone not just from "illegal immigrants" to all immigrants. Well, all immigrants who aren't white and have billions of dollars or the capacity to stay married to Donald Trump, anyway. Trump's initial speech called immigrant "rapists" and "murderers," and the rhetoric has not toned down. It's only gotten worse. The GOP latched onto the idea that immigrants were stealing and eating pets, not because there was a shred of truth to the allegation, but because it fit their narrative of immigrants being horrible people. This rhetoric has led to an increase in hate crimes against Latinos. 

Now, we are seeing ICE raids rounding up immigrants. [source] But surely this is different than the Nazis rounding up the Jews, because the plan isn't to gas them. The plan wasn't to gas the Jews initially. They were to be deported, or they were to be confined to ghettos. [source] The current US plan is to deport these people, but not all the countries they are from are willing to accept deported citizens. [source] So, what happens to them in the meantime? Because, as this person and I agree, mass deportation is not practical.

What will happen is that the people captured by ICE will be detained in prisons. But we already have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with 614 of every 10,000 people in prison in 2024, over 2 million people. [source] The estimated number of undocumented immigrants? 11 million. Can our already-crowded and crumbling prisons handle that many people? No. 

So what happens next? What we have seen happen before. They will be detained in some form of camp. It happened with the Japanese internment camps. It happened to the Indigenous Americans. We're fine confining people in squalid conditions as long as we don't think of them as people. That's our history, one we have continuously refused to confront. Maybe we won't actually commit mass murder on the scale the Nazis did. But with folks like Stephen Miller making the calls? With Elon Musk making Nazi "jokes" on his social media platform? Their rhetoric exactly mirrors that of the Nazis. These are not people I can just assume would ever stop trying to get rid of non-white people, no matter the method.

"Never again" doesn't mean that we stop mass slaughter but ignore everything else that mirrors the run-up to the actual gas chambers. We don't dehumanize people, we don't deprive them of their rights, we don't lock them up without a trial, and we don't torture them while imprisoned. The time to stop it was 2016, but the second best time to stop it is now. Yet even liberals like the governor of Massachusetts are capitulating to the rounding up of undocumented immigrants. [source] Whether it's because they agree with the white supremacists or just feel an apolitical sense of duty, not opposing the plans for mass deportation means that people are doing exactly what the Germans did in the run up to WWII. We can never assume it will not end up with the gas chambers, and even then, what else will happen is also barbaric and should be prevent.