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“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
-Winston Churchill 1948

Immigrants, both undocumented and documented, both with and without “criminal” records, are being scooped up and “disappeared” in our communities. Immigrant milkers who have worked successfully on farms in Vermont for years have been suddenly whisked off to parts unknown. (“Expect a milk shortage soon”, according to one newspaper headline.) Forty migrants from Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard were just arrested and shipped “back to America”. (That’s what native islanders call that trip when they travel to the Cape for shopping, etc.; “I’m going to America today.”) Wearing orange life preservers as they huddled on the open deck of a Coast Guard boat and surrounded by federal guards in black masks, bullet-proof vests, and side arms, the immigrants were taken “back to America”. Per the Department of Homeland Security “There are at least two criminals in this batch of 40 immigrants; one is a member of M-13 and another is a child abuser”. There is no other information about them or the remaining 38. I suspect that their names were captured from the passenger’s list of the plane that brought them up from Texas.

A Cape Cod health center has issued cards of instructions to their patients on how to assert their legal rights in barring agents from their homes . . .  IF there is a knock on the door, of course. The card describes the rights and law correctly. It is one reason why we hear about and see so many street abductions.

The card is available at the health center in three other languages: Spanish, Portuguese, and French (Haitian), . . . but not in German or Hebrew . . . yet. The mind-blowing part is that this “seems normal and necessary” today at a health center on Cape Cod, which is a part of America. The most chilling words on this card to me are:  “These cards are available to citizens and noncitizens alike.” Who’s next???

Current immigrant detentions are based mostly on the 1882 Public Charge Doctrine  directed at slaves who were freed after the civil war and were “likely to become a public charge” [ie. ask for government benefits] because of their poverty. The doctrine was updated in 1996 and 1999 to include immigrants. In 2019 under Trump’s first administration Latinos, the disabled, anyone who has ever received or applied for government benefits, and even green card applicants (spouses and children) from a family of naturalized citizens were added to the list. The purpose? To restrict their access to benefits, including health care (parts of Medicaid and ACA), food stamps, rental assistance, and other governmental assistance programs. Now even Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR) are subject to the Public Charge Test under certain conditions if returning to the U.S. after 180 days away. The Public Charge Test consists of 8 check boxes regarding age, health status, family status, financial status, employment, education and skills, expected period of admission, and “likelihood of becoming self-sufficient” once admitted (or re-admitted) to the U.S.

This fear and anxiety campaign by the federal government is working very well. The fear of immigrants of having their name and address recorded anywhere is blocking their use of medical care, even in free clinics which agree not to record their names and addresses. Avoidance of those medical services will raise the eventual cost of tax-supported medical care for us all as preventative services are omitted and illnesses are untreated until they get worse.

The fear and anxiety campaign directed at immigrants (called “aliens” throughout the DHS 300 page 2019 document) is keeping all immigrants, documented and undocumented, with or without a “criminal” record, from seeking medical care, from sending their children to school, from attending their existing construction or hospitality jobs, from driving their cars, from going to church, or even from leaving their house; to the point where Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard economies are virtually shut down. “Without its engine, Nantucket’s [economy] slows”, was the Boston Globe headline on May 31.

It is hard to believe that wide-spread street arrests of specific groups of U.S.residents followed by governmental detention and deportation to other countries is happening in America. Don’t forget, the Nazi government sent their detainees to “camps” in Poland and Austria, not Germany. The first targets were the Poles, then the Gypsies and the homosexuals, and then the Jews. Who might be next in America?

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”