A shameful new form of incarceration in America!

I can no longer remain silent. We cannot, we must not continue picking up people without warrants, without Miranda warnings, and locking them up in warehouses in the land of the free! It’s just plain immoral! 

I’m a journalist, and earlier in life I had no intention of getting involved in this incarceration business. In the mid-1990s, however, I met a wrongly convicted Black man, we became brothers, and there was a dramatic change in my life. 

In 2001 I formed an organization now known as Humanity for Prisoners, which, at last count, had assisted some 16,000 prisoners…about half of the entire population of Michigan’s prisons. 

Then this journalist started writing again. I began posting essays on the internet 18 years ago, and since that time have shared more than 1370 editorials on topics related to incarceration. Startling numbers prodded all of this. 

-The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with over 2 million people in prison.

- The U.S. accounts for about 25% of the world's prison population despite having only 4% of the global population. 

Closer to home: 

-The population in our Michigan prison system is approximately 33,000.

- Michigan has the longest prison terms in the country. 

Data like that gave me plenty to write about. 

And now, I must speak up about a sad new form of incarceration in our country.  

-The Trump administration has said it is aiming to be able to detain upwards of 100,000 immigration detainees at any given time, as part of its government-wide effort to carry out a deportation crackdown of unprecedented proportions.

-Already ICE's detainee population has reached a new record high of 73,000, as the crackdown widens.

- US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to use as many as 23 warehouses for detaining thousands of immigrants arrested by federal agents.

-A massive ICE facility right here in Michigan detains 1,200 immigrants. 

I'm old enough to remember the start and the end of World War II, and today’s outrageous stories remind me of a sad chapter in history during that war. The United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps! In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty and concluded that internment had been the product of racism. 

Is that what’s happening in our country all over again? The organization FACTUALLY states: Scholars, civil-rights groups, and advocacy organizations argue that ICE enforcement practices have produced racially disproportionate harms—targeting Latinos, Blacks, Indigenous and other communities of color—leading many to describe those practices as systemic or structural racism. 

How to react.

Here’s a quote from a group of courageous pastors published in the Reformed Journal: As followers of Jesus Christ, we must ask what it means to proclaim fellowship in the body of Christ if we remain silent when dignity and truth are diminished. This is not a partisan concern. It is a church concern. To be Reformed is to be committed to truth, repentance, and renewal. 

We call upon pastors and leaders in our fellowships to speak clearly against racial dehumanization and to teach a theology of human dignity that shapes our congregations.  Let our pulpits proclaim the equality of all God’s children. Let our churches become places of repentance, healing, and active reconciliation. May we stand together in solidarity with those whose dignity has been denied and work toward a Church and a world that more fully reflect the kingdom of God. 

Former senior U.S. immigration officials said they were not aware of any other period in American history when the U.S. government had held more people in immigration detention! 

Even if our churches refuse, you and I must take a stand. By remaining silent you are already taking a stand. We cannot tolerate masked goons raiding our homes, schools and churches without warrants and without due cause, terrorizing and locking up men women and children---fellow human beings---in warehouses. What say you?

God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.  Genesis 1:27