Now my father’s own father, he waded that river.
They took all the money he made in his life.
Six-hundred miles to the Mexico border.
They chased us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita.
Adiós mis amigos, Jesus and Maria.
You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane.
No, all they will call you will be Deportee. — Woody Guthrie
The waiter sets down a plate of char-grilled shrimp, fresh vegetables, and a mound of brown rice. He smiles and says, “Enjoy. And let me know if you need anything.” Then he walks to the end of the bar and begins talking in animated Spanish with a coworker. It’s the Fourth of July and the place isn’t crowded. They seem to be enjoying their jobs, but just watching them makes me afraid for them — and for what this country is becoming.
I’d listened to Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee” earlier that day. It wasn’t foresight. It just showed up on my Facebook feed, a version by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Guthrie wrote it about a plane full of Mexican laborers that crashed in 1948 in Los Gatos Canyon, killing all aboard. The song broke me up. It really did. Go listen to it. It’s about human beings and how we label them and dehumanize them. We haven’t come so far in 77 years. In fact, we may have reverted to a darker place.
Consider the Big Bloated Bill that Donald Trump signed into law earlier that day. Yes, it’s an environmental disaster and it takes healthcare from millions, but the real story of the bill is how it legitimizes hate. If you have brown skin and speak Español, like the two young people in the restaurant, federal ICE agents can come to your workplace — or school, or church, or home — put your wrists in zip ties, throw you in a van, and send you to a detention center … maybe somewhere like Alligator Alcatraz, Florida’s shiny new concentration camp that opened last week.
Trump, Kristi Noem, Ron DeSantis, and other notables were there for the opening festivities, like it was a new Dairy Queen. They applauded the new highway signs; they smirked at the “Alligator Alcatraz” hats, T-shirts, beer koozies, and other merch. Because nothing is funnier than a prison camp in a desolate swamp for the people who wait on your tables, process your food, build your houses, and harvest your crops. Oh, some of them may actually be criminals, but that’s hardly the point anymore. It’s just theater now, like pro wrestling. Only this time, we’re the bad guys, grabbing people and body-slamming them to Gitmo, El Salvador, South Sudan — all with the blessing of the Supreme Court.
And it’s about to get worse. With a fresh budget of $108 billion, ICE becomes the largest “law-enforcement” agency in U.S. history, with more funding than the FBI; DEA; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; Bureau of Prisons; and the U.S. Marshals Service — combined! More than half of that enormous pile of our tax dollars will go to for-profit prison corporations to build more detention centers and buy more planes for deportations. If you invested in private prison corporation stock last month, you just made bank. The overt racism is the hustle. The billions are the pay-off.
All of this madness has brought us to a place where I don’t recognize my country any longer. The rule of law? Six Supreme Court justices have knelt in obeisance to the rule of Trump. ICE has become a secret police agency. No one knows who’s really working for them or what their “training” is. I do know that legitimate law officers need a warrant to arrest you, and they don’t wear masks. What ICE is doing isn’t “crime-fighting.” It’s a crime.
I take a last sip of my margarita and look again at the cheerful young workers in this Mexican restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee, on Independence Day, and all I can think about are those sad lyrics … “You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane. No, all they will call you will be Deportee.”
