WHAT DO BILLIONS FOR DETENTION AND BORDER POLICING MEAN FOR OUR COUNTRY AND FOR CLIMATE?

President, DeSantis and Noem touring the new concentration camp in Florida dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."

The day after the Senate passed its version of the One Big Betrayal Bill, Trump hopped on a plane to visit his new concentration camp in the Florida Everglades.

Does this sound like hyberbole? It is not. In the words of Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, "“Alligator Alcatraz” is a concentration camp...Mass detention of civilians without trial or traditional legal protections on the basis of identity (race, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation) rather than any criminal act, often for an indefinite period and done principally to expand political power. Check." We, the United States of America, are funding and hosting this camp, and this is just the beginning.

If the bill passes the House in its current form, as we expect any minute, with a tenfold increase in funding for rounding up and confining hundreds of thousands of people in dangerous and inhumane conditions indefinitely, the United States will be changed forever, becoming a police state in which no one will be safe from government surveillance or indefinite detention without due process.

The bill caps the number of immigration judges at 800, giving lie to those who argue that the goal is for immigrants to come here legally. That is not the goal. The goal is to build the architecture of the police state to detain as many as 200,000 people at one time. The funding in the bill will make ICE the largest jailer in the world, with an additional $167 billion at its disposal. If you build it, they will come.

As this ABC report clarifies is already happening, ICE is ramping up its targeting of innocents going about their daily lives:

But beginning May 25, the data appears to show there was a shift in enforcement -- with individuals with criminal convictions making up only 30% of those arrested. Those arrested with pending criminal charges accounted for 26% of the individuals arrested and 44% had no criminal history.

These people will languish or die unceremoniously in the sweltering heat of Florida's swamps, or be transported to equally inhumane camps in complicit countries where they have no ties, no rights, and no possibility of rescue, guilty of nothing more than crossing a border in search of safety or a better life for their children. Most have already lived here for decades, have been building our country, paying taxes into programs they cannot benefit from, and raising families with roots and relationships here in the US. They have been caring for our children, our parents, building our homes and communities, and putting food on all of our tables. They are our community.

We must ask ourselves "Who are we?" These are our tax dollars at work. These camps are already operating in New Mexico, where CoreCivic operates a detention facility in Torrance County at which people are denied water, sanitation and healthcare. We can celebrate the fact that the sale of public lands was removed from the bill, and that the excise tax intended to kill the solar and wind industry didn't make it into the final Senate version, but these wins will mean nothing if and when the oligarchy invests these enormous sums of our tax dollars into the destruction of our democracy and our humanity.

When the police run out of immigrants to round up, the private companies operating these detention centers will apply political pressure to keep their beds full - and if we do not act now with courage and clarity, it is US citizens who will fill those quotas. The administration is already talking about jailing and deporting its political opponents and election officials.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CLIMATE?

As this very illuminating article clearly illustrates, the United States is all in on fossil fuels, rejecting the cleanest and cheapest fuel sources in the world at the behest of the fossil fuel oligarchs that fund our government. But the rest of the world is moving on - especially China - and no amount of US government subsidies will change that fact.

This administration was funded by and for the fossil fuel industry, and loyalty to fossil fuels is tightly interwoven with the racist, nationalistic, "America First" identity fueling its anti-immigrant rhetoric. Why? Because hatred and tribalism are the antithesis of the empathy, co-operation and planning necessary to address a complex global issue like climate change.

The oil and gas industry funds and profits off of war, division, and distraction. When and if humanity works together, their industry will be the first to fall.

This does not mean that immense harm has not already been done, or that the fossil fuel industry will go quietly into that good night without trying to squeeze out every drop of profit before its demise. They invested in this administration because they know the longer the United States remains focused on enemies within, the longer they can keep drilling and burning despite the rising heat, disasters and fires that have the power to galvanize co-operative climate action. In fact the President convinced Republican holdouts on the big ugly bill by promising to crack down hard on solar and wind projects.

The answer is solidarity. Solidarity with the immigrants in our communities, solidarity with the people across Europe and India suffering through intense heat, solidarity with the people of Siberia and Canada choking on smoke from out-of-control wildfires. The answer requires a recognition that we are all connected. We cannot thrive while others suffer. Our privilege, wealth and whiteness will not protect us. Independence is an illusion.