Confronted with the bald fact that, of the people in Florida’s just-constructed swamp internment facility for the “worst of the worst,” more than 250 had neither criminal convictions nor pending charges, the Department of Homeland Security was untroubled. “Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally. It is not an accurate description to say they are ‘non-criminals.’”
Except for the fact that they have not technically committed any crimes, these are criminals. Except for the tiny, tiny, minuscule (I hate to even mention it) quibble that we have no evidence they’ve done any crimes, these people deserve to be locked up. Except for the minor, minor technicality that they haven’t violated any laws, other than by arriving here—which might not even have violated a law! We have asylum, or used to, before we decided to pull the rug out from under thousands of people—these are the worst of the worst.
The total lack of any evidence against them, except that Trump border czar Tom Homan thought they seemed suspicious, is just proof of what good criminals they are. Evidence, schmevidence! All you need to do is look at them, listen to them! (Homan has subsequently walked this back, or tried to.) You can simply tell when someone is a criminal, even when they keep trying to abide by the law, showing up for immigration hearings and paying taxes on time. Perhaps especially then.
So many neighbors of serial killers say that the killers were quiet, kept to themselves, and seemed like productive members of their community. If these detainees’ neighbors say the same, that’s so much more proof that they are some of history’s greatest monsters, or would be, if they ever took up crime. These would be hardened assassins if they had ever killed anyone. If they had done a single war crime, it would have been worse than those of Slobodan Milošević. The only reason these serial killers’ names don’t ring in the ear with the horror of Jeffrey Dahmer’s and Ed Gein’s is because they have not killed or eaten anyone. But we’d better keep them behind bars to be safe. They could start at any time!
Indeed, all that stands between them and crime is means, motive, and opportunity. That’s why it’s good that in addition to the preemptive measure of putting some of these all-but-criminals behind bars, the DHS has also taken the extraordinarily un-racist precaution of collecting immigrant DNA into a large database for the ease and convenience of suspecting them of crimes. If these toddlers weren’t criminals, would their DNA already be in this Usual Suspects Database? Unlikely.
These are almost certainly terrorists, human-rights abusers, gangsters, and more! And some of them even have parking tickets. That’s why they belong in a facility that we laughingly refer to as “Alligator Alcatraz.” (“If there’s alliteration, it’s not a human-rights violation.”) They are probably human-rights abusers, which is why we have locked them up without due process or any kind of publicly posted list to let anyone know their whereabouts.
Remember, criminals are to be found around other criminals. (“I think we all know that criminals tend to hang out with criminals,” Deputy ICE Director Madison Sheahan noted.) And there they all are now, in a facility that we have insisted is for the worst of the worst. Sounds pretty dispositive. If they weren’t the worst of the worst, what would they be doing there?
You can tell they are human-rights abusers because they are sleeping on cots 32 to a room in a just-constructed internment camp. The human-rights abusers are the ones who have been seized by masked men because they looked or sounded a certain way. The human-rights abusers are the ones packed into cages in the oppressive heat. The human-rights abusers are the ones brushing their teeth with toilet water, unable to shower for days, crammed together in a mosquito-infested swamp, struggling to access lawyers. You can tell they are criminals because of the side of the fence they’re on.
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