Out of sight
by Felipe De La Hoz
Last week, a group of more than 100 U.S. immigration detainees finally faced the prospect of release from a prolonged and miserable incarceration. I say “U.S. immigration detainees” as a term of art because they are, technically, under the custody of the Panamanian government, which has been holding them for weeks at the behest of the Trump administration, which had first deported them from U.S. territory.
The New York Times described the decision to release these 112 people as “another challenge to President Trump’s efforts to deport millions of migrants from the United States,” but those efforts seem to have begun to achieve their purpose already; 187 migrants had already “voluntarily” returned to their countries of origin or were in the process of doing so, having never gotten the chance to petition fully for humanitarian protections in the U.S.
There will likely be other facilities like these, in Panama and elsewhere, established as warnings against the folly of trying to journey north. This effort is part of a bipartisan and long-standing goal to redefine the border itself, oozing it ever outward. People will get sick, they will disappear, and they will die in these liminal places, removed from the remaining legal and constitutional protections left in the United States.
My colleague Jack Herrera recently asked how many immigrants might die in U.S. custody; I also wonder how many will die in the custody of others acting at our direction.
Keep us breathing fire!
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