We need to think very clearly about the policies and actions our government is carrying out with respect to “illegal immigration”. The Trump administration has waged a war of hate-based language and accusation against non-citizens in the United States, and has set the goal of achieving one million arrests and deportations annually. It has characterized the undocumented peoples currently living and working in the United States in the most dehumanizing and racist terms, specifically aiming to whip up fear, distrust, and hate against non-US-born people, mostly black and brown. Think of Trump’s language about the Somali communities of the midwest (“Garbage!”), Trump and Vance’s lies about Haitian refugees in Ohio (“they’re eating the pets!”), and blanket racism about people from Mexico and Central America (“criminals and rapists”).

The language and lies expressed here are entirely reminiscent of the anti-Semitism of the Nazi rise to power. They serve the purpose of dehumanizing this whole population of people, turning them into something “subhuman” and dangerous. It is racism, it is white supremacy, and it is fundamentally shameful and wrong. It is the language used by Nazi leaders like Eichmann in their efforts to rid Europe of non-Aryan peoples.

The language and lies are accompanied by practices, actions, and policies that are both extra-legal and fundamentally brutal and evil. The use of deadly force by ICE agents is too wide to be the work of the occasional “bad apple”; it is the systemic result of an armed government secret police force that does not recognize normal procedural protections for human life and welfare. Only in fascist states, Stalin’s regime, (and often enough, the Jim Crow South) were armed security services so unhampered by law and training from the exercise of brutality and violent death against “suspects”.

The goal of removing one million peaceful men, women, and children per year because of their national origin is nothing short of ethnic cleansing — the use of violent means to force masses of a population to leave a region or country. It was familiar in the Nazi era, it was common in the period of the breakup of Yugoslavia, and it is happening in the United States. It is fundamentally shameful for every one of us — whether we supported Donald Trump in 2024 or we did not. The actions now being taken by the US against millions of human beings is a mark of inhumanity that all of us are responsible for.

And what of the children? Since we all met five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos some months ago, we’ve known that the children of non-US-born parents are at grave risk. CNN posted a report today about unaccompanied children being forced to appear in immigration courts to plead against deportation (link).

In a Texas courtroom Monday, 25 migrant children lined the pews — a 6-year-old pretended to fly an airplane, a 3-year-old played with the mic, and a teen girl tried to make eye contact with a friend. The judge reminded everyone of what was at stake.

“I see you’re smiling and think these proceedings are funny, but I need you to pay attention,” the judge told the teen girl. “They could determine whether you remain in the country or are removed.”

Migrant children as young as 2 are showing up at immigration courts nationwide, many without attorneys, to make their case to stay in the US and avoid deportation.

It is heartbreaking to think of these children, alone, facing deportation to a country they often do not even remember, and to think of the inexpressible cruelty of a government that inflicts this pain and lifetime loss on children. Like the “family separation policy” of the first Trump administration (link), its purpose seems literally to impose pain on these children and their parents, as a deterrence to other people thinking of passing into the United States.

In 1940 Adolph Eichmann was tasked to develop a plan for deporting Europe’s Jews to Madagascar. Here is a description of Eichmann’s plan from Wikipedia:

Adolf Eichmann, the head of the RSHA Sub-Department IV-B4, which dealt with Jewish affairs and evacuation, soon became involved. On 15 August, he released a memorandum titled Reichssicherheitshauptamt: Madagaskar Projekt (Reich Security Main Office: Madagascar Project), calling for the resettlement of a million Jews per year for four years and abandoning the idea of retaining any Jews in Europe. The RSHA, he emphasised, would control all aspects of the program.[27] While Rademacher called for the colony to be under German control but self-governing under Jewish administration, Eichmann made it plain that he intended for the SS to control and oversee every aspect of life on the island, which they would govern as a police state.

Notice the brutality, scope, and SS control that are specified by Eichmann. Each of these is a feature of today’s campaign of arrest, detention, and deportation.

Here is an excerpt from Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem concerning the Madagascar plan (link).

Stephen Miller, as longstanding designer and advocate for the administration’s current plan for deporting one million men, women, and children per year, you will be remembered as sitting among the most appalling criminals against the innocent of our century.