I Don't Know How to Explain to You That You Shouldn't Buy Concentration Camp Merch

What kind of person buys an "Alligator Alcatraz" beer coozie?

screenshot / winred

Credit where credit is due: It turns out the federal government can still accomplish big things when it’s sufficiently motivated. That’s the good news.

Unfortunately, it seems like the only thing motivating the government these days is the overtly racist desire to purge the United States of whichever bloc of marginalized undesirables Stephen Miller is mad about on any given day. That’s the only possible explanation for how Florida was able to construct a massive migrant detention center on an infrequently used airport tarmac deep in the Florida Everglades in a single week.

“Clearly from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there’s a lot of alligators you’re going to have to contend with,” explained Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “No one is going anywhere once you do that. It’s as safe and secure as you can be.”

In spite of being dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, this remote facility has almost nothing in common with the infamous California penitentiary, which, although a notoriously cruel gulag, was nevertheless part of—and subject to—the laws of the federal penal system. This new Florida installation, on the other hand, seems totally detached from any sort of judicial oversight or pipeline, ostensibly serving instead as a semi-permanent receptacle for people kidnapped by (presumably?) ICE agents. So what do you call a massive “camp” of people “concentrated” together by the government outside the normal judicial system?

I’ll let the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explain:

Nazi concentration camps were sites of extralegal detention. Unlike prisons, concentration camps were independent of any judicial review. The Nazis imprisoned people in these camps without charging them with a crime. Prisoners were held there indefinitely and without legal recourse. There was no guarantee they would ever be released.

With that in mind, take a look at footage of the newly constructed site and tell me the Museum got this one wrong.