Accepting FEMA Camp Prisons for Illegal Immigrants Justifies them for Americans

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

Dees Illustration

Eric Blair
Activist Post

Illegal immigration is a very emotional subject, especially in the border states that are most affected.  Illegal immigrants are easy scapegoats for politicians to pin their failures on for budget problems, the violent ramifications of the drug war, the lack of jobs for Americans, etc.

Hardliners want to arrest and deport all illegals and build a fence to keep them out, while sympathizers seek a path to citizenship. On both sides, politicians use extreme rhetoric to divide the public into their respective camps.  The hardliners, who seem to be winning public opinion in areas along the border, attempt to dehumanize illegal immigrants, much like they do with any perceived enemy during war.

This is done because it’s easier for the public to then accept a wide variety of inhumane treatment for this population group.  It happened in 1942 when about 110,000 Japanese living in America were brought to internment camps because the attack on Pearl Harbor and war propaganda made them appear dangerous to the public. 62% of those interned were American citizens.

More recently, the American public has accepted vile and inhumane treatment of Muslims like torture, detainment without charges, and even outright murder. This has even happened to several Muslim American citizens with hardly a whisper of complaint from the public as a whole.

In the so-called war on terror, it is now legal to assassinate American citizens, as well as indefinitely detain them without charges on the suspicion of being a terror threat.  Even the military is now authorized to patrol the streets of America and make arrests of citizens.  None of this would ever have been possible if would-be “terrorists” weren’t incrementally and thoroughly dehumanized in the eyes of the public.

The injustices done by the American government to those “over there” was bound to come to the homeland, because as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  What happened to treating others as you would want to be treated?

The same principle applies as we learn that illegal immigrants from Mexico, whose only crime is coming to America to work, are being locked up in tent-city prisons that resemble the notorious FEMA detainment camps that are on standby for American citizens should civil unrest intensify.  It would seem that if we are willing to accept these inhumane prisons for anyone, then surely anyone will eventually be sent there.

The video below shows Mexican immigrants inhumanely crammed into FEMA Camp-like tent prisons:

Mexicans are not less human than Americans; much like Muslims are not less human than Americans. Illegal immigration is a nonviolent crime and this is how they are treated.  If the injustices of the war on terror coming home to roost in America is any indication, how could anyone justify this type of prison?  It would seem to only enable a future where Americans will be detained in such a manner for nonviolent offenses.