“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
— Inscription on Statue of Liberty
“Very soon, this facility [“Alligator Alcatraz”] will house “deranged psychopaths …
and some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”
— Donald Trump, July 1, 2025
Among the many lawless measures pursued by the second Trump administration, its campaign of terror against immigrants stands out as profoundly cruel and pointless. It threatens millions of people of foreign origin — including persons born here or holding green cards or visas, or even U.S. citizens — with surveillance, denial of federal health and economic benefits, apprehension, and deportation, all without due process of law.
In early June, Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, declared that Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was directed “to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day.” If that goal is achieved, it would amount to over one million arrests in one year. Even elected officials who resist ICE have themselves been arrested: the mayor of
Newark, New Jersey; a New Jersey congresswoman, a Wisconsin judge, a U.S. senator in
California, and the controller of New York City … so far.
The cruelty of ICE arrests has been vividly on display thanks to videos by members of the public called to bear witness to human beings being beaten and shackled by armed and masked federal agents, often at the victim’s workplace, school, or routine check-in at immigration offices. Children are separated from their families and detainees are often deprived of medication and access to legal representation. This level of government-sanctioned brutality recalls the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which authorized slave catchers to earn bounties for seizing escaped slaves in northern states.
Meanwhile deportation levels have been surging. The New York Times (Aug. 25) reported that “at least 180,000 people have been deported by ICE under Mr. Trump so
far …” and the agency is on track to deport more than 400,000 people in 2025, (exceeding the previous annual record of 316,000 deportations under President Obama
in FY 2014). While cutting federal agency funding across most of the government, Republicans in Congress recently appropriated $75 billion to ICE over four years, vastly
expanding its current $10 billion budget. The act earmarks $45 billion for 80,000 additional detention beds and $14 billion for transporting people to other countries (many with deplorable human rights records). New detention facilities, like “Alligator Alcatraz” deep in the Florida Everglades extolled by Trump, are hastily assembled by private contractors at huge taxpayer expense. Airlines like Avelo at Bradley Airport are likewise profiting from transporting detained immigrants under government contracts.
ICE detention facilities are infamously (and perhaps intentionally) medieval. One account describes the arrest of an 18-year old high school student on his way to volleyball practice in Milford, Massachusetts. He was forced to spend six days in a windowless, overcrowded room at an ICE field office before being released on bond. As described in the New York Times (June 29), “There was one toilet for 35 to 40 men who had no privacy when using it. They slept on the concrete floor in head-by-toe formation with aluminum blankets to cover them.” The food was wretched and the portions tiny; he lost seven pounds in six days.
This campaign of terror violates the very essence of “America” as expressed by the immortal Statue of Liberty inscription quoted above. It also threatens to cripple many sectors of the U.S. economy that rely on immigrant workers, including construction, warehouse staffing, agriculture, health care, and the hotel/restaurant industry. And it inflicts needless fear and suffering upon millions of individuals and families who have come here, whether legally or not, “yearning to breathe free.”
On Saturday, Sept. 13 from 1 to 5:30 pm, First Churches (UCC and ABC) in downtown Northampton will host a public interfaith forum on “Confronting the Immigration Deportation Crisis.” Drawing on expertise within the Valley and beyond, the forum will include two panels, a keynote speaker, and a “Call to Action Fair.”
Panel One — “America’s Immigration Divide: Welcome vs. Exclusion” — will summarize
the conflicted history and tortured present status of immigrants in the U.S. Speakers will
include Emeritus UMass Amherst Historian Joyce Avrech Berkman; Latin(x) scholar David Hernandez, Mount Holyoke College; Attorney Pamela Stuart, based in Washington DC; and Gazette columnist Sara Weinberger.
The second panel will review Valley-based experience and programs that support immigrants, including personal accounts by two foreign-born U.S. citizens now living and working in the Valley.
The keynote speaker will be Reverend Cristina Rathbone, author of “The Asylum Seekers,” and currently Congregational Coordinator for Immigration at the Massachusetts Council of Churches in Boston. Following the onset of Covid, she partnered with Episcopal Migration Ministries to launch the national support network “Neighbor to Neighbor” (N2N).
The “Call to Action Fair” starting about 4 p.m. in the parish hall will encourage audience members to mingle with immigrant support staff (and each other) to learn how they can become actively involved in the fight to uphold our immigrant neighbors and friends. The forum is free and registration is not required. All are welcome!
Rutherford H. Platt is a resident of Florence and an emeritus professor of geography at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.