Don't Help Trumpism Survive Trump

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Next Comes What

Host: Andrea Pitzer
Episode: Don't Help Trumpism Survive Trump
Date: February 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the dangers of incremental and well-intentioned reforms that risk institutionalizing Trump-era immigration policies. Host Andrea Pitzer draws parallels between current U.S. immigration enforcement and the historical rise of authoritarianism, using examples from Guantanamo Bay and post-9/11 policies. She argues that unless there's a dismantling of underlying bureaucracies and policies—not just surface reforms—the U.S. risks perpetuating and legitimizing Trumpism well beyond Trump's political life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Hillary Clinton’s Munich Comments & Democratic Complicity

Andrea Pitzer begins by referencing Hillary Clinton’s speech on U.S. immigration, cruelty, and nostalgia for a restricted past:

• Clinton acknowledged excessive, harmful deportations under the Clinton and Obama administrations, calling for humane reforms ([00:00]).
• Democrats are refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without significant immigration reforms ([01:45]).
• Pitzer highlights the risk: “What Democratic leadership is calling for runs the risk of making the overall Trump project on immigration permanent.” ([04:08])
• Memorable quote:
  • “I was already working on this episode last week, and what Clinton said fits in pretty clearly with what I want to address today.” – Andrea Pitzer ([00:59])

2. Government Shutdown and Immigration Stalemate

• Democrats demand rollbacks for ICE and border enforcement abuses (e.g., mandatory warrants, body cameras).
• Republicans unwilling to concede, painting Democrats as anti-law enforcement ([02:05]–[03:10]).
• Both parties locked in an ideological impasse, with public protests and personal stories rising.

3. Escalation of Immigration Enforcement: Then and Now

• Host discusses how the Trump administration has expanded and intensified enforcement, but with new tactics and visibility:
  • Billions dedicated to ICE recruitment, often targeting far-right demographics ([04:58]–[05:44]).
  • Use of propaganda and branding that evoke right-wing extremist culture ([05:20]).
  • Focus expands to all immigrants, not just those with criminal records ([07:33]).
• Notable quote:
  • “In the second Trump administration, the goal so far appears to be to frighten every immigrant, documented or not.” – Andrea Pitzer ([08:19])

4. Stephen Miller’s Influence & Broadening Target

• Policies shift under Stephen Miller to increase fear, including naturalized citizens and mixed-status families ([07:33]–[08:33]).
• ICE investigates and prosecutes naturalized citizens for potential voting or paperwork fraud:
  • “Current and former DHS officials...have never heard of an initiative like this being run by the department ever before—calling it not normal.” ([09:22])
• The system now mirrors Japanese internment in scale and intention ([08:26]).

5. Critique of Incremental Reform and Bureaucratic Entrenchment

• Democrats’ proposed “guardrails” (e.g. banning masks, requiring warrants) are inadequate for the scale of the problem ([10:44]–[11:16]).
• Pitzer warns: “We have to simultaneously take on the whole apparatus that is now shifting into more and more unaccountability.” ([12:02])
• Historic comparison: Well-intentioned reforms (post-9/11, Guantanamo) ultimately preserved abuses by making them part of the system.

6. Historical Parallels: Guantanamo Bay as Cautionary Tale

a. Haitian & Cuban Detention in the 1990s

• Guantanamo used for mass detention of migrants under Clinton, stripping detainees of most legal protections ([14:27]–[16:53]).
• Court rulings that could have protected detainees' rights were traded away for immediate relief, never becoming precedent.

b. War on Terror & Legalization of Abuses

• After 9/11, Guantanamo again becomes site for indefinite detention courts often rubber-stamp overreach only partly reined in later ([17:27]–[19:44]).
• Supreme Court noted risks of indefinite detention, but failed to enforce a real solution.

c. Institutionalization by All Three Government Branches

• Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: Courts strike down sham tribunals; Congress responds by legalizing military commissions ([20:50]–[22:03]).
• “Exerting checks and balances that might have corrected the nightmare wound up strengthening the initial overreach.” – Andrea Pitzer ([22:03])

d. Expeditionary Detention Model

• The military’s rapid-build “expeditionary” detention model, pioneered at Guantanamo, now being used for large-scale domestic immigration camps ([24:48]–[25:00]).
• Navy contract for $55 billion to expedite construction of new camps within the U.S. ([25:00])

7. Current Atrocities and Bureaucratic Harm

• Mass deportations are ongoing; ICE’s bureaucracy predates Trump and is set to outlast him unless actively dismantled ([27:44]–[28:09]).
• Personal stories: Deportation of a two-month-old with bronchitis, families deported with minimal resources ([27:44]–[28:09]).
• Even dramatic, well-intentioned Democratic reforms may institutionalize harm rather than end it.

8. Call to Action: Dismantle, Don't Legitimize

• Pitzer urges for the “active dismantling of DHS and its massive metastasizing camp system” ([30:18]–[30:36]).
• Pressures audience to ask: Will you vote for politicians building concentration camps?
• Local action success: Dallas warehouse project for detention center defeated by community organizing ([33:04]–[33:07]).
• Ongoing grassroots work—court observers, school patrols, direct resistance to ICE—are vital.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the risk of reform:
  “There’s a long history of thinking that you’re doing a good thing by limiting the harm of some other person’s malicious actions while accidentally winding up helping the greater harm by institutionalizing it.” – Andrea Pitzer ([12:37])
• On the Obama administration’s record:
  “You’re quick to point out that the cages were built under Obama administration, I was there. Family detention. We had 100 family beds. Under Obama administration, we built 3,000 more.” ([11:36])
• On bipartisan complicity:
  “Clinton seems not to understand that Trump is able to do what he is doing, in part because of what her husband and Barack Obama did during their presidencies, as well as both Bush presidents, of course, and the tools that they have bequeathed to him.” – Andrea Pitzer ([11:00]–[11:16])
• Guantanamo as a warning:
  “Her comment, reflecting concerns about indefinite detention, had been recorded in the decision for posterity. Yet it wasn’t some kind of self-executing directive that after 20 years, a full generation, the whole thing would have to be shut down.” – Andrea Pitzer ([19:44])
• On the urgency of local action:
  “Keep going. The administration is picking up speed in part because Trump and his lackeys are terrified that the people who oppose them are going to be successful at stopping them and they are afraid of being held to account. Keep going and that’s it.” – Andrea Pitzer ([33:24])

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Hillary Clinton’s Remarks & Policy Continuity: [00:00]–[03:10]
• Escalating Enforcement & ICE Recruitment: [04:58]–[07:33]
• Targeting All Immigrants & Naturalized Citizens: [08:11]–[09:22]
• Guantanamo Bay Historical Lessons: [14:17]–[24:48]
• New $55 Billion Detention Camp Contract: [25:00]
• Recent Atrocities (e.g., Sick Child, Mass Deportations): [27:44]–[28:21]
• Institutionalization of Atrocities & Democratic Risks: [28:46]–[30:18]
• Successful Resistance (Dallas Example): [33:04]–[33:07]
• Closing Call to Action: [33:24]

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Central Message:
  The fight against Trumpism and its legacy demands dismantling, not reforming, the infrastructure of cruelty inherited and expanded by successive U.S. administrations. Otherwise, well-meaning attempts to “fix” the system will only help Trumpism outlast Trump.
• Action Steps Urged:
  • Demand full dismantling of DHS/ICE’s camp system from elected officials.
  • Refuse normalization or institutionalization of mass detention.
  • Support and participate in local actions (court watching, resistance to facilities, community defense).
  • Bring the issue to the forefront during every election and in every community.

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Transcript

[Andrea Pitzer]

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, former U.S. senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about the cruelty unleashed by the Trump administration. I understand we are fighting an ideological battle that is as old as time and its attempts to return to some nostalgic past and to control or exclude whole parts of the population. Very often the ideological impulse to try to protect the status quo or return making America great again in some nostalgic past that existed for white men and capitalist enterprise was not exactly open and welcoming to people who look like me and a lot of other people who are part of our national fabric. Addressing immigration directly, she said, migration has been a huge flashpoint. More people were deported under my husband and Barack Obama without killing American citizens and without putting children into detention camps than were in the first Trump term or this first year of Trump's second term. It went too far. It went too far. It's been disruptive and destabilizing and it needs to be fixed in a humane way with secure borders that don't torture and kill people. I was already working on this episode last week, and what Clinton said fits in pretty clearly with what I want to address today. I think it's important to look at the facts. The partial government shutdown that began the same day Clinton delivered that soundbite is focused on funding or not funding the

[Guest or Interviewee]

Department of Homeland Security. And I so here's where we stand

[Andrea Pitzer]

with Democrats refusing to allocate money until a series of immigration reforms have been accepted. They include rollbacks on the use of masks during operations, a requirement for judicial warrants instead of administrative ones, the use of body cameras, clear identification and other measures. Republican senators have balked at making any concessions.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Nope. Very simple. The Karen wing of the Democratic Party has told every single Democrat if you don't vote, shut down dhs. If you, if you do vote to fund ice, we will punish you politically the rest of your natural lives.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And are saying that ICE agents face personal risks if people know who they are. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described it as an attempted murder of federal federal law enforcement. But video evidence directly contradicts claims the men attacked federal agents. So Ceciles said he'd retreated into his home and was shot in the leg while in the process of closing and locking his door. I'd like to address the dangers inherent in both approaches, Clinton's comments as well as actual policy during prior Democratic administrations. Well, as perhaps one of the few people who has actually been around since the end of the Second World War and the demands put forth or publicly supported by the Senate Minority Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Republicans have made a clear decision that they would rather shut down fema, shut down the Coast Guard and shut down TSA than enact the type of dramatic reforms necessary.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Paint a picture altogether that, if we look at it with fresh eyes, suggests we're at an inflection point.

[Guest or Interviewee]

So I've never protested before in my entire life, but.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Sorry. I absolutely believe that Hillary Clinton and Democratic leadership on the Hill are horrified by what ICE and Border Patrol are doing right now.

[Guest or Interviewee]

I watched 4th and 5th grade kids run away from our own government, and

[Andrea Pitzer]

I don't know anyone who isn't a Trump supporter who approves of this violence or who wouldn't be thrilled to see any part of that brutality hemmed in.

[Guest or Interviewee]

And I decided I'm going to come out here and stand with you guys and be part of this, because I never want to see a child ever run away from our own government ever again.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Sorry about getting emotional, but paradoxically, what Democratic leadership is calling for runs the risk of making the overall Trump project on immigration permanent.

[Guest or Interviewee]

And frankly, if these Democrats would come and say, please help us, please, we'd stop crimes all over the place. And we're doing it in a lot of a lot of cities today.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I want to address why some of the talk of reforms is well minded, but is also a minefield that could solidify the expanding network of camps going forward.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Sometimes we have to force ourselves upon them.

[Andrea Pitzer]

First, I want to acknowledge reality. Hillary Clinton isn't wrong about the number of deportations under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. So why did immigration enforcement under Donald Trump seem different during the first Trump term?

[Guest or Interviewee]

Who exactly is ICE trying to recruit? Last summer, the agency was given $8 billion to turbocharge recruitment. The hiring campaign included social media outreach, which caught the attention of experts who study the far right.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And why is it much more visibly violent in the year since Trump returned

[Guest or Interviewee]

to office in August, ICE posted this image on Instagram and X. Note the tagline which Way American Man? It's a meme often used by right wing influencers and which refers to this book, a 700 page antisemitic rant popular with neo Nazis.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The reason is twofold. In part, it seems different because Trump and his allies are doing something different.

[Guest or Interviewee]

The agency is spending millions, according to the Washington Post, on geotagging technology to target ads at specific demographic groups like people who attend UFC fights or gun shows. ICE also rolled out TV ads aimed at police officers in sanctuary cities where Illegal immigrants can still receive public services.

[Andrea Pitzer]

As immigration expert Aaron Reichland Melnick, senior

[Guest or Interviewee]

fellow at the American Immigration Council, one of our leading experts on immigration policy, advocate, I think it's fair to say for liberal immigration policies using that term broadly, though, these days, liberal is anything to the left of, I don't know, you know, in 1924, Aaron Reichland Melnick

[Andrea Pitzer]

noted this week, immigration looks different because border crossings have dropped precipitously. But the administration wants to keep posting these numbers.

[Guest or Interviewee]

The U.S. government wants to arrest, detain and deport 1 in every 24 people in the country, 4% of the U.S. population in some cities. In some neighborhoods, it's as high as 1 in 10 people. In some, it's probably even higher than that, maybe one in three in some neighborhoods.

[Andrea Pitzer]

So we see quotas, we see agents grabbing anyone in the interior that they can.

[Guest or Interviewee]

That cannot be done without fundamentally transforming who we are as a people and our relationship to law enforcement.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In my opinion, it's also because Trump externalized something that had been folded into the system before he ever showed up.

[Guest or Interviewee]

These are not people who are distinct and separate and apart from the community. They are part of it. Again, about 8 and a half to 9 million have been here for 15 plus years. There's about 6 million mixed status families in the United States where you've got an undocumented immigrant with a U.S. citizen, parent or child or spouse.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In his first administration, the goal shifted from focusing on criminals with deportation orders so that any immigrant could be targeted at any time. White House senior advisor Stephen Miller is said to be the driving force behind

[Guest or Interviewee]

these very dramatic changes.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The idea was that no undocumented immigrant should feel safe.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Jared Kushner had been lobbying Mr. Trump to work with Congress in pursuit of new laws, but the president refused and gave new power to Miller, who's looking to revive the family separation policy and close ports of entry.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Public strategies like family separations were to provide highly visible punishment that would frighten those in the country without papers.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Miller and the president now appear determined to use immigration to motivate the president's base and portray Democrats as soft on security.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In the second Trump administration, the goal so far appears to be to frighten every immigrant, documented or not.

[Guest or Interviewee]

And then we start talking about a scale of detention. The only modern comparison is Japanese internment.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And given that they are currently returning to an attempt that failed to make headway in the first administration, a focus on stripping status from naturalized citizens, which they are now starting to talk about more seriously.

[Guest or Interviewee]

And that's something you can't go back

[Andrea Pitzer]

from we can conclude that they now want even immigrants with US Citizenship to be frightened. In the same way, the Department of

[Guest or Interviewee]

Homeland Security's chief investigations arm this week launched a broader nationwide campaign to investigate and prosecute naturalized citizens who may have improperly voted in past elections before they became citizens. This is a plan ordered by the White House.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The deportations were never about the status of those being deported. They are about Stephen Miller's obsession with removing as many people of color from the US as possible.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Current and former DHS officials told Ms. Now they have never heard of an initiative like this being run by the department ever before calling it not normal.

[Andrea Pitzer]

There are countless examples to back up this idea, but here are just two.

[Guest or Interviewee]

At stake is the question of whether or not the United States remains a sovereign country.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The Guardian reported that the US government recently spent more than $1 million per detainee, in some instances to send passengers to countries they have no connection to, only to see many sent back to their home nations at further taxpayer expense, according to a new congressional investigation. The report also says the administration often uses expensive military aircraft to carry a small number of people. And this week, Representative Mark Alford told

[Guest or Interviewee]

cnn, if you tie a judicial warrant to what ICE is doing, it will never happen.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This is not any kind of rational or legal process. It is a sham. It is a rejection of existing law. It is built to demonstrate vindictiveness and hate.

[Guest or Interviewee]

I hate my opponent and I don't want the best of them.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And now we see Secretary Clinton saying this is all going too far, and Schumer and Jeffries demanding measures to install guardrails on behaviors from immigrant law enforcement agents.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Are you willing to accept anything less than the White House agreeing to all 10 of your demands to rein in ICE and Fire Secretary Noem? Or is it all or nothing? Look, the bottom line is we have three basic objectives to rein in ICE and end the violence.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But Clinton seems not to understand that Trump is able to do what he is doing, in part because of what her husband and Barack Obama did during their presidencies, as well as both Bush presidents, of course, and the tools that they have bequeathed to him.

[Guest or Interviewee]

All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Tom Homan spent decades with Border Patrol, for instance, and Obama brought him in to help him run ice.

[Guest or Interviewee]

I'd like to remind you that under the Obama administration, I mean, you're quick to point out that the cages were built Under Obama administration, I was there family detention. We had 100 family beds. Under Obama administration, we built 3,000 more. As for Schumer and Jeffries, first, no more of these roving patrols. You can't just go to someone's house bashing their door without a warrant. You can't indiscriminately grab someone off the streets and arrest them.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They are failing to see that we have to simultaneously take on the whole apparatus that is now shifting into more and more unaccountability.

[Guest or Interviewee]

The second area is accountability. They have to coordinate with local governments. They don't do that now.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The paramilitary style street actions, the unconstitutional detention, the refusal to respond to court orders, and the massive expansion of our detention camps for civilians without trial.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Finally, and maybe most important, no secret police, no police department in America doesn't identify themselves, but these guys wear masks.

[Andrea Pitzer]

There's a long history of thinking that you're doing a good thing by limiting the harm of some other person's malicious actions while accidentally winding up helping the greater harm by institutionalizing it.

[Guest or Interviewee]

I was very clear that in the immediate aftermath of 9 11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This can happen through validating an act's public legitimacy by not arguing directly against it.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Will you appoint a special prosecutor, ideally Patrick Fitzgerald, to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping? We're still evaluating how we are going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth. And obviously we're going to be looking at past practices.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It can happen by reinforcing the bureaucracy of a bad system, and it can happen by accidentally reforming an abomination just enough so that it passes legal or political muster and can continue to exist.

[Guest or Interviewee]

I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In my history of concentration camps, I included a good deal about Guantanamo because I saw it as an ongoing threat. That's what we still have in place today, even though it has a much smaller number of detainees there. And I'll take a second to note that it is still open.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Most people don't even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I want to use three examples from Gitmo history today that illustrate the danger we're in right now with regard to how we are responding to the Trump administration's immigration Overreach.

[Guest or Interviewee]

That's a tough. That's a tough place to get out

[Andrea Pitzer]

of now for regular readers or listeners. I have spoken about some of this before, but not quite in this way. In the 1990s, long before the War on terror, detention began happening there. Guantanamo became famous as a detention site for Haitians and Cubans who were picked up at sea trying to get to the US it was massive, a massive camp, and it was fenced with razor wire.

[Guest or Interviewee]

And you have the tower with the guards, and then just during the day,

[Andrea Pitzer]

you just roam the yards. They were taken to Gitmo with the idea that they would have fewer legal rights and fewer options for making a home in the US Than they would if they managed to make it to the Florida coast.

[Guest or Interviewee]

We had foreign nationals held at Guantanamo precisely because the government believed or took the position that there were no legal constraints.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Thousands at a time were detained in terrible conditions. There were riots, lack of access to medical care, and HIV positive detainees who were segregated in horrific quarters.

[Guest or Interviewee]

These people had not even been charged with a crime, but they were treated worse than criminals.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Court cases were brought by teams of students and lawyers to see if judges would assert jurisdiction and protect the detainees, even though the site wasn't part of the mainland United States. A judge in a federal district court in Brooklyn, New York, ruled that one set of detainees was entitled to constitutional due process, including the right to a lawyer, the right to proper medical care, and the right to not be held indefinitely. So the Clinton administration made a deal. The plaintiffs at the heart of the case would be released, but at the cost of the judge's ruling, which would be vacated so as not to tie the government's hands going forward, getting these

[Guest or Interviewee]

Haitians off of Guantanamo. It came with a price. The ruling in our favor by the judge, the court order said alien detainees on Guantanamo have constitutional rights.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Those potential legal protections would not end up on the books for anyone that followed.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Guantanamo would remain in legal limbo, leaving the door open for it to be used as a detention center outside the reach of US Law.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The clients in that case were saved, but it wound up leaving Guantanamo in a gray area in which it was not clear that detainees had any legal rights or recourse.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Judge Johnson's decision would not become legal precedent, though.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The legitimization. Or to more parallel the events on Capitol Hill today, the safeguarding of a few rights in a limited way can be a dangerous path to tread. The small reforms, which surely did save some lives, led to the next stage nearly a decade later.

[Guest or Interviewee]

This crusade, this war on terrorism

[Andrea Pitzer]

is

[Guest or Interviewee]

going to take a while.

[Andrea Pitzer]

After 9 11, the Bush administration was looking for a location to host extrajudicial trials and detention, Somewhere where rough justice might be administered, A place where legal shortcuts might not be strictly legal, but where it could be argued that housing hundreds of war on terror detainees with plans to harm them might not also be strictly illegal. Guantanamo was the only place that fit the bill. The second way that Guantanamo history is especially relevant in in this moment is that after 9 11, the Supreme Court followed US legal tradition. Given that Congress had passed an authorization for the use of military force in September 2001 to respond to the attacks, the justices initially gave President George W. Bush leeway, wide leeway on the military operations that followed. But after some time passed, by 2004, in the case of Yassir Hamdi, they had begun to directly question both the legality of the current mass detention without due process Guantanamo and how long the government was planning to continue it.

[Guest or Interviewee]

I thank you for the question on a court ruling that literally came out in the midst of my meeting with the prime minister. And so I haven't had a chance to fully review the findings of the Supreme Court. I want to assure you that we take them very seriously.

[Andrea Pitzer]

When Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day o' Connor wrote the opinion for Hamdi, she pondered the possibility that the military actions against Al Qaeda might never end and observed that, quote, if the government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, unquote, a detainee might wind up subject to indefinite detention for the rest of his life. In that particular case, the the decision, o' Connor wrote, ruled in favor of the plaintiff's right to contest his detention, but also noted that Congress had authorized it in the first place.

[Guest or Interviewee]

The American people need to know that this ruling, as I understand it, won't cause killers to be put out on the street.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Her comment, reflecting concerns about indefinite detention, had been recorded in the decision for posterity. Yet it wasn't some kind of self executing directive that after 20 years, a full generation, the whole thing would have to be shut down. And so here we are, 24 years after Guantanamo's inauguration as a war on terror detention facility, and it is still a stain on notions of due process and democracy, still a threat to the country.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Today I'm also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000 person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay.

[Andrea Pitzer]

An authoritarian response to the crisis of 911 wasn't checked early on by the courts. However, after the Supreme Court had greenlit a number of excesses. It did finally raise broader concerns and deal a blow to the Bush administration's agenda.

[Guest or Interviewee]

To the extent that there is latitude to work with the Congress to determine whether or not the military tribunals will be an avenue in which to give people their day in court, we will do so.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In 2006 with the case Hamdan vs Rumfeld, the Supreme Court ruled that the military commission system established by President Bush to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay was unfair and illegal.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Well, the military commissions, and I think this is what the court recognized, were essentially a fake court.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Now to be fair, in our court system, courts are limited by the cases that appear before them.

[Guest or Interviewee]

I was told that this was not going to be the case.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But instead of addressing the underlying program of black sites, torture and indefinite detention or forcing the trials of suspected terrorists back inside the US legal system, they ignored or legalized the lawlessness of the broader program by calling out just one part. In response, Congress legalized what the Justices had taken exception to. They passed the Military Commissions act as a direct response to the Supreme Court's decision.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy. For on this first full day that the Military Commissions act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear mongering a government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

[Andrea Pitzer]

By 2007, Guantanamo's existence as a detention camp for suspected terrorists and a place to give them kangaroo court trials. An initial massive overreach on the part of the executive branch had been examined and institutionalized by all three branches of government. Exerting checks and balances that might have corrected the nightmare wound up strengthening the initial overreach. Oconnors note in the Hamdi decision that this all might become a problem if it went on became a quaint observation about a phenomenon that would outlive her. But there's a third way in which Guantanamo is relevant here, a way I've never talked about before. This corner of Cuba has been an American naval base, but for the past 20 years it's been notorious for the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. The courtroom complex at Guantanamo where I went in 2015 is known as Camp Justice. Prisoners now remain held at a detention centre which we're not allowed to film. Hearings take place not on American soil, but under a military judge at Camp Justice. It was built as an expeditionary project. In 2007 this was done through a hundred person team composed of national Guardsmen from six states. The idea was that the facility could be stood up very quickly, avoiding delays. A larger permanent facility was initially planned to support the proceedings, but it was scrapped in favor of the expeditionary concept that would be, quote, quicker, cheaper and better. According to Air Force Major Chad Warren, operations officer for the 474th Expeditionary Civil Engineering Squadron, back when he was building the facility. Expeditionary facilities were not the only related development from the Department of Defense under the second Bush administration. Expeditionary civilian workers were also organized in the same era. Iran study from a decade ago noted that the Department of Defense increasingly looked to its civilian workforce to fill critical needs overseas during operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. How does this relate to what's happening with immigrant detention today? It connects to the expanding network of detention camps the Trump administration is rushing to establish now. Earlier this month, we saw reporting from Pablo Manriquez showing that the Trump administration's new plan, already in progress, is to use additional expeditionary contracts, this time through the Navy, to quickly stand up a number of camps nationwide.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Menriquez reported that a massive Navy contract vehicle, once valued at $10 billion, has now ballooned to 55 billion DOL to expedite President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda.

[Andrea Pitzer]

As Manriquez wrote, the mechanism for this expansion is the Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award contract wexmac, originally designed for military logistics abroad. In a move to bypass traditional competition delays, the Navy's Supply System Command has repurposed the vehicle for Titus territorial integrity of the United States. This $45 billion increase, published just weeks ago, converts the US into a geographic region for expeditionary military style detention. The process that was used to build Camp justice at Guantanamo, the physical framework for military justice there will be used to create countless Guantanamos with far more detainees and less in the way of delay and restrictions. And to do so inside U.S. borders. The RAND study noted a decade ago that U.S. northern Command, known as U.S. northcom, which quote, deploys its own civilians within the United States, did not have a need for Department of Defense expeditionary civilians at the time of the study. However, it did not rule out the possibility in the future if it were possible to mobilize these personnel on very short notice. Guantanamo became a fusion of U.S. and foreign soil for military purposes, but without any of the rights inherent in that idea. The expeditionary aspect there was part of a larger model on how to carry out an unethical mission, the war on terror. Later expeditionary approaches were used in Iraq, a preemptive arbitrary war. And now, with this massive Navy expeditionary contract, the earlier abominations become a model for how to insert military process, military style, rough justice into the US Itself.

[Guest or Interviewee]

These aren't people, these are animals. And we're taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate of that's never happened before.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Some of what the US Government is perpetrating in this moment is a conspiracy to commit heinous criminal acts against vulnerable people. We see it unfold every day on the streets of the country. But along with that, another whole part of this is a process, the natural growth of administrative bureaucracy that was planted long ago in poisoned soil and has continued to grow up and out from there for decades. There are so many moving parts to the terror the government is imposing, it's hard to keep up.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Meanwhile, we have an update on the two month old suffering from bronchitis at the ICE detention facility in Dilley. Now, it's been a busy night, I should say. We've learned tonight that according to Congressman Joaquin Castro, he and his family have been deported to Mexico.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But in my opinion, it's critical that we keep track of the underlying bureaucracy of harm, some of which predates Trump and much of which will outlive him if we don't shut it down.

[Guest or Interviewee]

According to their attorney, ICE deported the family with only the money that they had in their commissary. A total of $190 to unnecessarily deport a sick baby and his entire family is heinous.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This is the risk of the list of demands that Schumer and Jeffries have circulated about how to hem in and address ICE and Border Patrol abuses that have taken place in Minneapolis and across the US not all the measures will be useful, but many ought to happen.

[Guest or Interviewee]

And of course, the purpose of internment wasn't deportation, though actually some Japanese were deported. But nevertheless, the country was damaged by Japanese internment.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And of course, it would be fantastic to stop some of the violence that has been unleashed.

[Guest or Interviewee]

You know, you had huge portions of towns ripped up, their businesses taken, homes stolen, and it fundamentally reshaped the country. And we have come to look on it with shame. And that's what's going to happen unless this isn't pulled back.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But what are the enforcement mechanisms? How will accountability be ensured? More importantly, by not addressing the greater issues of the complete illegality of the larger project and not acknowledging the ways that inhumane, detention, focused and punitive policies across decades have brought us to this point. By not directly addressing our burgeoning camp system, democratic leadership risks becoming complicit in this New part of U.S. immigration. Purges by letting them continue with a few band aids on the tactics right

[Guest or Interviewee]

now, 400,000 deportations a year, say they. With this, you know, the money comes online, they can increase that to 600,000 deportations a year. You are still looking at a mass deportation operation that is going to be 10 to 15 to 20 years of this.

[Andrea Pitzer]

How many US residents ever knew or now remember that Sandra Day O' Connor clearly thought war on terror detention at Guantanamo would be deeply problematic if allowed to continue year after year after year?

[Guest or Interviewee]

This isn't one quick rip off the band aid to get rid of the undocumented population. This is one to two decades of this. If it is not pulled back, who

[Andrea Pitzer]

will lead the call for a dismantling of this sick network of camps instead of pressing for a few changes while throwing in condemnations that, like o' Connor's comment decades ago, will mark only the moment in which someone knew better but did not act to stop what followed. Unlike the courts, Congress is not dependent on what matters of law come through the system to its attention. Representatives and senators can choose what to address while in the minority. Everyone knows that Democrats can't magically get votes for everything that they want, but they can take on big issues and support the groundswell happening against ICE and Border Patrol and the camp facilities across the country. Though Secretary Clinton might want us to hand it to her husband and Barack Obama on immigration, their policies are part of what laid the groundwork for what is happening now. We can reject their immigration policies and those of the Bushes and Biden and Trump too. We should press our elected representatives to demand an active dismantling of DHS and its massive metastasizing camp system. It is beneath a democracy to run such an operation. The flexible and fast expeditionary model is as easy to dismantle as as it is to put up, but it won't go away on its own. As Gitmo shows us, we must demand this dismantling. Elected officials can put it on the public radar now as an issue for the elections. And so can we ask your neighbors if they're really going to vote for the guy who wants a concentration camp full of your other neighbors in your backyard?

[Guest or Interviewee]

The problem has to be solved. The problem has to be solved because with as we have kind of made illegal some kinds of labor that I'd like to see legal, we're doing two things. We're creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family loving people that are in violation of the law. And secondly, we're exacerbating relations with Mexico

[Andrea Pitzer]

in the meantime, we can continue to work on the ground to protect our actual neighbors and our metaphorical ones from ice.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Let's address ourselves to the fundamentals. These are good people, strong people. Part of my family is a Mexican,

[Andrea Pitzer]

as so many are already doing as ICE observers in courtrooms or in neighborhoods, as deportation flight watchers, as school patrols that help keep children safe. We can work against the acquisition of warehouses for camp detention.

[Guest or Interviewee]

Can I add to that? I think the time has come that the United States and our neighbors, particularly our neighbor to the south, should have a better understanding and a better relationship than we've ever had.

[Andrea Pitzer]

There are so many successes on this front. Most recently in Dallas.

[Guest or Interviewee]

The owners of a local warehouse say that they will not be leasing that building to dhs, which had planned to turn it into a detention facility that would hold up to 9,500 people. That is a big win for residents who have been pushing back on that idea.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Keep going. The administration is picking up speed in part because Trump and his lackeys are terrified that the people who oppose them are going to be successful at stopping them and they are afraid of being held to account. Keep going and that's it. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with one person who's looking for ways to survive this mess. To support this podcast, please become a paid [e-mail] and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.