29 January—Most undocumented immigrants are guilty only of being in the United States without authorization. That’s not even a crime. Rather, like speeding a few miles over the limit, it’s a civil violation. It’s punishable by deportation but not incarceration.

Why, then, are undocumented immigrants locked up and not infrequently made to suffer inhumane detention? Well, even though the American concentration camps may have all the appearances of third-world prisons, they’re officially on the books as detention centers and are there only to ensure that noncriminal illegals appear for hearings. Sure.

Even more troubling, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol operatives are supposed to be fully aware of the civil—noncriminal—status of most undocumented immigrants, why are they so brutal in arresting them? Can you imagine a cop pepper-spraying and cuffing you for a traffic violation? [Okay, something like that happened not too long ago in Connecticut.]

That could well be construed as a rhetorical question. But the painful answer, in reality, lies in the totally inappropriate, utterly disgraceful and disgusting—but politically expedient—Donald Trump-Stephen Miller neo-Hitlerian persecution of vulnerable minorities.

The Department of Homeland Security needed—needs—lots more people to do the dirty work of ridding the nation of easy targets, most of whom look and sound different from the mainstream. And in the single year of Trump’s second reign of terror alone, the goon force has more than doubled, from 10,000 to 22,000. And DHS is desperately looking for still more, offering $50,000 signing bonuses and other luring benefits, as well as lowering hiring and training standards.

And let’s not forget immunity and impunity. Despite what Trump flunkies call “federal immunity,” ICE and CBP agents aren’t technically above the law—they’re not supposed to be immune from criminal prosecution or civil litigation. But without going into detail, between qualified immunity in civil lawsuits and federal supremacy over states in criminal cases, DHS thugs don’t have much to worry about—even absent “federal immunity.”

Moreover, the Department of Justice retains the ultimate authority to prosecute federal functionaries who violate criminal statutes. That’s happened very rarely in the past. And, given the blatant Trumpian criminality of the current DOJ, it’s highly unlikely that anybody at all doing the emperor’s bidding will be prosecuted . . .