by Tamara Adira
(Text originally appeared as part of an artist statement for Arte y Pasion ‘s 2020 production Mantas de Luz, a protest of the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants. It remains just as relevant today.)
We dedicate MANTAS DE LUZ: El Diario de Ana Franco to our immigrants who have to endure life in the detention centers. This is happening right in our backyard, much like the concentration camps of 1942 Germany and Poland. The project refers symbolically to the silver aluminum foil blankets: what purports as a symbol of protection becomes instead a symbol of exposure.
By June of 2019, up to 18,000 people were held in immigration detention centers on our Mexican border each night. A Customs and Border Protection Commissioner stated that, “A high number for us is 4,000. A crisis level is 6,000. 13,000 is unprecedented.”
Immigration authorities have detained a record number of undocumented immigrants this past year, ICE held an average of more than 52,000 people in custody each day throughout fiscal year 2019. Many more will join these immigrants confined in jails, prisons, tents and other forms of detention – and many of these are for profit.
In 1933-39, Nazi concentration camps held around 45,000 prisoners. First, they comprised of Communists, Socialists, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, LGBT, and other people they considered undesirable. In 1945 this would peak at 715,000 as the role of the camps expanded to hold more minorities, including Jews, disabled people and the clergy. Six million Jews would perish in the camps in what the Nazi’s called “The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.”
Concentration Camps are not a new phenomenon, under any name. The United States’ reliance on immigrant detention is not new, nor did it emerge with Donald Trump, though its growth under his administration is confounding. Like Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, our camps are shrouded in secrecy, and it’s hard even to know where they are or what they are called. Conditions are so dangerous in the facilities that there have been so far over 24 deaths in ICE custody, as well as sexual assaults, rapes and preventable illness. As a Jewish person with ancestors who have survived the holocaust, and some who did not, what’s happening at our border hits close to home for me.
The unmarked men we now see in the streets are strangely familiar. There is precedent for the forces like those that Trump just unleashed on Portland. It was in 1942, called the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police), or #Gestapo for short. It was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The Gestapo was Hitler’s tool to find and seize undesirables such as anyone who protested the Nazi regime, the Jews, Roma, disabled, and homosexuals.
These people were seized and put in unmarked vehicles and taken away simply for exercising their expression, or simply for existing. When the Gestapo didn’t meet with resistance, eventually they would load crowds onto unmarked trains and sent to detention centers. We later learned these were concentration camps, where six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others spent the rest of their tragically shortened lives.
We have met with the horror that our own beloved America has come to follow this model. Each day, Mexicans, Immigrants, and Black people in this country suffer human rights abuses which get worse with time. Racism against blacks has run so deep in this country that it has been institutionalized as part of our fabric and culture. And now, we find people exercising free peaceful expression are being gassed, seized, kidnapped.
We can’t be afraid to speak up. We cannot afford to continue to politicize human rights. This is why this project is important to me. At this time more than ever, we must not forget what is happening in our very backyards.
Our 2020 election will come and go, but the institutions who have placed these people in power will remain. Our detention camps at the border will remain. Our immigrants whose lives have been frozen in there will remain, unless we take action. Now at this time more than ever, it is imperative that each of us do what we can to call attention to it so we can change it.
We can’t let our fear stop us from speaking out for the love of our beautiful country and people…made up of both genders, all colors, races, religions, creeds, and sexual orientation. We cannot pursue Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness without reclaiming our Human Rights. Our Human Rights are not politics.
What are other ways you can help? There are so many ways you can make a difference. First, Vote. Your voice matters. Run for office. Volunteer. Donate clothing, food, money to the shelters, food banks. And, find ways to help the officials who are currently in office who you believe in do their job. They can’t do this alone, they need our support. If you have something to say, speak your truth. It does and will make a difference.
This is our truth.