Don't Help Trumpism Survive Trump

Small fixes to ICE brutality can be dangerous, because they run the risk of entrenching what we want to stop.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/institutionalizing-harm

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-comes-what/id1779885475

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7lUaIWeKl0oET2DJVTWhy4

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews

This week's episode begins by considering the reforms to ICE operations that some Democratic leaders are demanding, as well as remarks by Hillary Clinton last weekend in Germany. Andrea Pitzer argues that what Democratic leadership is calling for runs the risk of making the overall Trump project on immigration permanent. She looks at how the talk of reforms is well-intentioned, but by failing to likewise address the larger problem, the opposition could solidify the expanding network of camps going forward.

Andrea considers three examples from the history of detention at Guantanamo of how small shifts had huge, unfortunate repercussions, The first is from Bill Clinton's first term, and shows how an attempt to save the lives of some migrants in detention at Gitmo was successful, but it came at the cost of leaving the site a legal black hole with no guaranteed rights for detainees. The second example comes from the post-9/11 era, when the Supreme Court gave minimal rights to detainees in the third year of War on Terror abuses there, but did so without addressing the larger abomination that Guantanamo represented. Andrea's third example looks at the expeditionary project model used in 2007 to build Camp Justice for the big trial of 9/11 suspects expected to take place on the island. That trial has still not happened. But in recent weeks, the same expeditionary model has been funded through a Navy contract to stand up detention camps for immigrants on a vast and expedited basis inside US borders. Andrea closes with recent successes from everyday people and ways that anyone can take action to stop ICE and close the camps.