Reports from numerous news outlets recently indicate, to quote from an article in The Independent, that “The Federal Emergency Management Agency is planning to give out more than $608 million in grants to states and local jurisdictions to build more immigration detention facilities, as the Trump administration seeks to expand U.S. detention capacity and quickly deport millions of people.â€
The article continues, “The Trump administration has also rejected 16 of the 18 applications for FEMA’s ‘hazard mitigation’ funds after flooding across the country this year, according to an analysis from The Hill.â€
We all know that the Morissey administration in West Virginia is salivating at the opportunity to get its hands on some of that funding so they can build a Mountain State version of so-called “Alligator Alcatraz.†No doubt, Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., is already trying to see how he can help expedite things, quivering with excitement about the possibility of another selfie with caged humans like the one he took in El Salvador.
Speaking of Moore, he recently co-sponsored legislation with Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., called the PATRIOT Parks Act, which the two congressmen state is to codify President Donald Trump’s executive order called “Making America Beautiful Again by Improving Our National Parks.â€
The legislation would increase entrance fees to our national parks, including the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, for foreign visitors. The word "PATRIOT" is used as an acronym here, standing for "Protecting America’s Treasures by Raising Inflow from Overseas Tourists." It should have been called The Nativist Parks Act or The Xenophobic Parks Act, but maybe those terms are a little too literal.
I don’t really see the PATRIOT Parks Act going anywhere. Like so much of what Moore has done during his short tenure in Congress, it’s intended to be posturing and feeding the base more than anything. This FEMA funding for state-by-state and locality-by-locality human detention, though, is nightmare fuel. Do you really think the goal is to build these facilities in numerous states and localities just for short-term detention and the rapid deportation of undocumented migrants? If so, you’re obviously not a student of history.
What seems to be a poorly understood fact is that migrants to the U.S., documented or not, have constitutional rights. That includes the right to due process. Unidentified, masked ICE agents are routinely depriving detainees and deportees of those rights. Once again, this starts but it does not end with migrants. We’ve already seen universities, law offices, media companies and other corporations capitulating to this regime’s demands with suppression of free speech, peaceable assembly, press freedoms and more.
Republican “leadership†has so far meant that about 65,000 West Virginians are about to face the loss of Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage and about 84,000 are about to lose some or all of their SNAP benefits. The GOP are trying to bring water-guzzling, energy-gorging, air-polluting, climate-destabilizing data centers to places like Tucker and Mingo counties, while depriving counties and municipalities of the tax revenue generated by such facilities. Now, “Almost Heaven†is faced with the prospect of becoming another hell for migrants targeted by fascists.
Contrary to traditional stereotypes, Appalachian culture is not a culture of white supremacy, nativism or isolation. Appalachians don’t acquiesce to a police state. We know the difference between threats to our safety, health and freedom (like the drug companies that flooded our hollers and hills with opiates) and people who are just trying to find safety and stability when their countries of origin become places where life is untenable — often because of U.S. foreign policies and the policies of Western institutions like the IMF and World Bank that are dominated by the U.S.
Detention centers are incompatible with the idea and ideals of Montani Semper Liberi. This is unacceptable. We cannot allow such facilities to be built here. Let the governor and our congressional representatives know this will not be tolerated in our beautiful state.
