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Jim North's avatar

Let’s not forget the mastermind behind it all. While Trump and his performative and sycophantic band of “true believers” are the face and facilitators of the cruelty, this is Stephen Miller’s brainchild. As much as I try to see the divine in all — to “look with better eyes,” — I struggle and fail to see light behind those eyes.

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Amy Lambert's avatar

100% agree, Jim. I'm not suggesting that Trump orchestrated anything, but that this is who he has always been and where we were always headed.

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Susan Martin's avatar

Trump is the useful puppet who is the face for the public who adores him. 🥺

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Jim North's avatar

Also 100% agree, Amy. Miller's plan would be only that were it not for Trump's backing and orchestration. And, I didn't mean to distract from the point of your essay, which is how we need to respond. Thank you for your helping us to focus on what is important.

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Amy Lambert's avatar

You didn't at all! No need to follow up about that :) Thanks for your kind words.

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Bill Fritz's avatar

I will refuse to use that title; this is a concentration camp. Death Camp-Trump One

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Virgin Monk Boy's avatar

This is one of those essays you don’t “read” so much as get confronted by, and thank God for that. There’s a sacred weight to what you’ve laid out here. It’s not just historical analysis or moral outrage. It’s a spiritual call to refuse complicity.

And that moment where you ask, “Is it a concentration camp? Is it genocide?”—those aren’t rhetorical. They’re questions we ask when our soul still has fight left. When we refuse to numb out.

Also: the way you named the link between capitalism, private prisons, and slow, bureaucratic violence hit hard. It’s not just cruelty. It’s cruelty with spreadsheets and contracts, built into policy. Designed to kill quietly enough for Sunday morning churchgoers to look the other way.

Thank you for naming it. Thank you for not looking away. We need voices like this, grounded in theology, not just theory, who still believe the gospel means protect the vulnerable, disrupt the systems, and burn the damn golden calf if you have to.

I’m with you. Persist. Persist. Persist.

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Linda Aldrich's avatar

Timothy Snyder also pointed out in his recent post that the 13th amendment outlaws slavery EXCEPT for criminals. It is imperative that we demand the leaders of companies to publicly disavow using “detention” camp labor, as I’m sure will that human capital will be offered by the owners of the camps before long. Prisons have long been a source of forced labor.

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Linda Hoenigsberg's avatar

Great reporting and comments.

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sue knopf's avatar

I can hardly breathe anymore. I call my senators & representatives & go to protest marches but I’m making myself sick from anger. I don’t know what to do. The church seems silent & I no longer want to be a part of it. I ordered your husband’s book. This feels so unreal.

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Kent Cooper's avatar

The fact that minorities are being housed in alligator Alcatraz is atrocious, but the entire concept harks back to thinking of black people, especially black children, as “alligator bait,” a term regularly used in the early twentieth century.

I would recommend adding to Zach’s reading list, Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin and George Floyd by Tamice Spencer-Helms. “At a young age, the Black church introduced her to a God of love, empowerment, and joy. But an encounter with White Jesus set her on a path that nearly destroyed her faith altogether. Persistent police brutality against Black people, and the white church's persistent excuses for it, forced Spencer-Helms to carefully identify how the idol of whiteness keeps Christians captive”. https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Unleavened-Wilderness-Between-Trayvon-ebook/dp/B0BTZ9J6LJ

Her personal account of betrayal in a white evangelical church, even as she trained to be a missionary for them, is heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time.

Never trust a white Jesus—-nor anyone who works for him.

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Paula Starr Sherrin's avatar

I can’t fathom a person being so full of hate that they would dehumanize vulnerable people like this…and praise the Lord on Sunday.

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Susan Martin's avatar

This was so hard to read, so it must have been so painful to write. You have brilliantly put together the history of eugenics with the current day situation we are watching unfold. We have allowed ourselves to be led down a path of slowly accepting cruelty, from mass incarceration to the dehumanizing of people who don't look like "us." I pray that this will wake some people up to the horror of simply going along with this evil. I seem to be spending equal times of being angry/frightened to being determined not to bend the knee to this evil regime. Each of us has a choice before us.

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Amy Lambert's avatar

I feel the exact same way about panic/fear vs. wanting to make a difference. As long as we don't give up, I think we're heading in the right direction. Thanks for your comment, Susan!

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Becky O A's avatar

I would add to your list of books: Becoming Kin by Patty Krawec. This article is so well researched and frankly, very frightening, seeing the outcome of the Project 2025 Great Replacement Theory and a lack of common understanding of the radical teachings of Jesus. I commend you for your work, thank you

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Amy Lambert's avatar

Thank you, Becky. I'll look into Becoming Kin!

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Mark Brown's avatar

The assertion that "the idea of a concentration camp within the borders of the United States is almost unbelievable" is breathtakingly naïve at best and dangerously ignorant at worst. To feign shock at the existence of such atrocities on American soil betrays a gross misunderstanding—or deliberate disregard—of historical and contemporary reality. The United States was not merely built upon the backs of marginalized and exploited communities; it systematically constructed mechanisms designed to maintain their subjugation. The ugly truth is that concentration camps are neither novel nor surprising here; they're a disturbingly predictable manifestation of deep-seated racism and xenophobia that have always undergirded American society.

To express surprise at Trump’s openly racist rhetoric or his jokes about feeding human beings to alligators is an act of willful blindness. These actions are entirely consistent with the historical treatment of people of color in America, from Native American genocides to slavery, Japanese internment, and Jim Crow laws. America didn’t need to wait for Trump to witness inhumanity—it has routinely justified cruelty through pseudo-scientific theories, such as eugenics, and embraced it through explicit policies.

Indeed, Trump’s eugenicist leanings are not subtle. His blatant references to immigrants as "poisoning the blood of our country" and his adoption of "racehorse theory" are direct echoes of the darkest chapters in human history. Yet to focus solely on Trump is to ignore that he is merely an outspoken product—and beneficiary—of systemic white supremacy, not its creator. The horrors that Trump's administration openly celebrated, such as "Alligator Alcatraz," are shocking precisely because of their transparency, but certainly not because of their novelty.

Moreover, to cite Ronald Reagan’s supposedly inclusive rhetoric as a counterexample is to engage in historical revisionism. Reagan, the architect of the racially loaded "welfare queen" trope, systematically dismantled social safety nets, disproportionately harming communities of color. The notion that Reagan's America was meaningfully more inclusive than Trump’s ignores both the intent and impact of his policies.

The privatization and profiteering of incarceration reveal the cynical incentives that drive America’s criminal justice system. Minimum occupancy clauses are not bureaucratic anomalies—they are intentional policies engineered to criminalize poverty and maintain racial hierarchy. America’s carceral system isn’t merely broken; it is functioning exactly as designed—to exploit marginalized populations for profit.

Additionally, contemporary examples like the ICE detention facilities and the forced sterilizations in California prisons are not aberrations but continuations of a long American tradition of eugenics, genocide, and dehumanization. The act of building detention centers in environmentally fragile areas sacred to indigenous communities is yet another grotesque chapter in the ongoing narrative of dispossession and abuse.

Finally, the rhetorical question posed—“Is this genocide?”—is depressingly redundant. Historical evidence and current policy make it abundantly clear: America's treatment of marginalized populations has always fulfilled the criteria of genocide in spirit, if not always formally recognized. From forced sterilizations to systemic neglect of healthcare, America has long been engaged in policies explicitly aimed at undermining the survival of its most vulnerable populations.

It’s past time to drop the pretense of shock. America’s brutal treatment of the marginalized isn't a departure from historical norms—it's their predictable extension. Real change demands confronting this ugly truth head-on, not feigning disbelief when faced with yet another example of systemic cruelty.

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Amy Lambert's avatar

Hi Mark. I feel that you may have misunderstood my tone? As many of your points are exactly what I'm suggesting within the article. Thanks for reading!

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