I applaud Salt Lake City’s efforts to halt conversion of a warehouse to a high occupancy ICE center, based on water and sewage capacity, for a proposed facility to house 7,500-10,000 detainees.
In his message during the General Conference, President Dallin Oaks said, there is “no place for bigotry, hatred or violence…regardless of religious belief, race, nationality, financial standing, education or culture.”
Latinos now make up one in eight LDS Church members.
ICE’s arrests target Latinos and other people deemed “alien.” Once in detention, their rights are taken away. Detainees are treated brutally and deprived of contact with families, legal help and adequate health care. Poor sanitation, medical neglect and violence have resulted in deaths. Communicable diseases can spread rapidly in camps and into our communities.
Detention centers are run for profit. The supposedly efficient Amazon Prime model treats human beings like packages. It is wrong.
We should call these for-profit detention camps what they really are: Concentration camps. Utah had such a camp at Topaz, the Japanese internment camp. It is something we should not repeat.
More and more Americans think ICE has gone too far, and that concentration camps are unjust.
Communities nationwide are fighting ICE warehouses. We should fight, too.
Regina Rosenthal, Salt Lake City