By John Pickard.
The above was the title of an astonishing article in the Financial Times this week. The heading is an exaggeration, in the sense that the crackdowns on democratic rights have not included a generalised assault on freedoms and in particular the labour movement. Although the collective negotiating rights of federal workers have been taken away, there is no widespread attack on trade union rights.
Nevertheless, some sections of US society are facing unprecedented attacks. Women’s reproductive rights have been severely cut back in many states, to the point where any abortion is all but illegal and there have been attacks on the rights of the gay and trans communities that can only be described as draconian. People are literally living in fear.
Moreover, these are not the only US communities living in fear, because any political activist with a Hispanic heritage is at risk of being picked up by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). And why? – because they might look like illegal immigrants.
This the complete text of a post on Facebook, describing a real-life case:
An ICE agent grabbed Merwil Gutiérrez and one of his fellow agents said, “No, he’s not the one.” Merwil Gutiérrez is a 19-year-old asylum applicant who lives in the Bronx. He was the “wrong one.” ICE wasn’t there looking for him.
“Take him anyway,” came the reply.
Let’s get it all out of the way:
* Merwil Gutiérrez came to the US legally as an asylum seeker
* In fact, he didn’t cross the border until he had an appointment with an immigration officer
* He has no tattoos (not that it’s illegal to have tattoos)
* He has not been making political speeches (not that it’s illegal to make political speeches)
* He’s not a member of a gang and has never been a member of a gang
* He has no criminal record in the US or overseas
* There is no arrest warrant. There is no charging document. His father can’t get ANY documents from the US government.
And yet, he’s in the infamous El Salvador prison that is supposedly for criminals, terrorists, and gang members…but that appears to be more and more a convenient place for ICE and the US government to stash innocent immigrants.
Merwil, his father Wilmer, and his cousin Luis walked much of the way from Venezuela to the US border in Mexico. They sometimes were able to take a bus. It took them about a month to hike and ride from their home to the Mexican border town of Juárez.
They applied for and received Temporary Protected Status (a legal US immigration status) and then applied for asylum (asylum seeker is also a legal US immigration status). They were sent to Texas, then Denver, and eventually New York, where they managed to find work (again, legal given their status). They got work permits and social security numbers (allowing them to pay taxes but not to receive benefits).
They got their immigration papers that told them their official court date to determine their future status: February 2027.
On March 15 of this year, Merwil was snatched by ICE agents on the front steps of his apartment as he was returning from doing some errands. His cousin Luis saw it from inside, and heard one agent say that Merwil wasn’t who they were looking for, and another say, “Take him anyway.”
Wilmer hasn’t been able to get ahold of his son since a phone call on March 16. The ICE locator says his son is in Pennsylvania, but no one will confirm this… and his name has appeared on the list of people deported to the prison in El Salvador.
I’m not personally sure we can continue to honestly call this prison in El Salvador a “prison” and not a “concentration camp.” The Holocaust Encyclopedia makes this distinction:
”What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.”
This is certainly true for Merwil, and it is true of many others on the list.
So we need to face up to the fact that the United States government is funding a concentration camp. The United States government is illegally arresting legal migrants, illegally deporting them, and illegally incarcerating them in a concentration camp.
This is an example of us doing it to a teenager.
We also have the example of Maryland father Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who the US government has admitted was deported to the prison/concentration camp due to “administrative error.”
President Trump said he’d try to get him back if the US Supreme Court said he should be brought back, which they did in a 9-0 decision. But when President Bukele of El Salvador visited the White House today, he said he didn’t have the power to send him back. And President Trump said he didn’t have the power to get him back. Suddenly no one has any power to do anything. It’s just surprising to see the world’s best dealmaker so easily beaten, and two incredibly powerful men who often say they can accomplish impossible things shrugging and saying something to the effect of, “I wish I could help but my hands are tied”… even when the government admits that they sent someone to this concentration camp by mistake.
Of course this is political theatre. Bukele could have brought him back on the same plane he flew into D.C. President Trump could make a simple phone call.
Why do we tell these stories?
Not to create fear.
We tell these stories so we can help each other understand what time it is in our culture right now.
We are a nation that is abducting and deporting legal migrants and placing them in US-funded extra-national concentration camps.
That’s important to face, and it’s important to acknowledge.
We tell these stories so we can prepare ourselves for when we will be asked to be a part of these injustices.
We need moral police officers and ICE agents to refuse to participate in illegal arrests instead of wearing masks.
We need the private prisons paid for by our tax dollars to refuse to house those illegally arrested instead of saying “we take whoever is sent to us.”
We need lawyers to refuse to work cases for the US government when they are clearly immoral.
We need airlines like Avelo — which has made a financial deal to operate deportation flights — to make a stand and refuse to be a part of these things. (And people that fly Avelo to let them know those are not our values.)
We need American citizens to vote, to speak up, to protect our neighbours, to reach out to vulnerable populations in our own communities and make sure that whatever comes they know we will be working to make sure they are treated with dignity and respect, that there will be due process, that we will live up to the American values we often claim but are struggling to live out in this moment.
There’s an teenager out there somewhere who came to the United States to follow the American dream. He walked here from Venezuela. He came legally. He did everything we asked him to do. He got snatched up as he walked toward his apartment in the Bronx.
An ICE agent grabbed him, and one of his co-workers said, “No, he’s not the one.”
And another ICE agent said, “Take him anyway.”
His name is Merwil Gutiérrez.
The case mentioned in this FB post was the basis of the article in the Financial Times. “At around noon on April 14 2025” Edward Luce wrote, “America ceased to have a law-abiding government”. He goes on to list the events outlined above, including Trump ignoring the 9-0 Supreme Court decision, but it gives more detail about the camps being set up in El Salvador and the visit to the White House by that state’s “vigilante president”, Nayib Bukele.
Bukele, Luce writes, “is playing host to what resembles an embryonic US gulag” and his warm reception was in stark contrast to Zelenskyy’s, for example. In flat contradiction of the US Supreme Court decision, both Trump and Bukele agreed that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, mentioned above, was, in fact, a “terrorist”.
“Foreign travellers to the US should beware”, Luce writes, “They can be detained without recourse. Americans should too. Trump casually told Bukele he may need to build more supermax jails for “homegrown” deportees, which means US citizens”. Foreign nationals are indeed taking notice and there has been a marked slump in tourist bookings to the USA.
Trump’s complete abandonment of any legal restraints or adherence to the ‘rule of law’ will not pull at the heartstrings of the billionaires and multi-millionaires who backed him: their approach to ‘legality’ would be much the same. But what is beginning to jangle the nerves of the billionaire class is Trump taking a wrecking ball to the US economy. That has already made them sit up and take notice. What would make them even more anxious would be serious mass opposition to Trump and ICE in working class communities and workplaces, and that is something that might yet come.
Frankly I think Trump is well beyond half way to making the USA a police state. It always has been seriously in thrall to its military and has numerous “deep state” agencies monitoring (illegally, remember Snowden’s warnings) home citizens as well as the citizens of the rest of the world.
However, whilst Trump follows in Bush juniors wake with his own version of extra rendition we have ourselves an equally serious concern about the UK’s turn to being a police state. Starmer is a weak, thin skinned, autocrat who ensured the vilification of Corbyn and effected his own elevation, promoted beyond his competence, with the Labour Party campaign of what I believe to be bogus anti semitism.
Before Starmer came to power, as Prime Minister, I often asked if the LP could not get rid of this “cardboard cut out” whilst allegedly leading the LP, what chance would anyone have once he had the full powers of the state. Needless to relate I got no answers. We have had thousands erroneously despatched from LP membership and now his insecurities and inanity are on full display. Whether you agree with him, or not, wholly or partially Prof. David Millar is a victim, now we also have Prof. Khoury-Machool. Not forgetting Richard Medhurst. The list of those identified and placed in security services cross hairs because of Starmers self declared being an “avowed Zionist” continues to grow and are far too many to simply list here.
But also look at the insidiousness of the police actions on January 18th and Met chief commissioner Mark Rowley running off to see the Board of Deputies following this and you see not only a Starmer Police State in full flow but also becoming a lichspittle for an Israeli pressure group. Also we have seen the Quaker meeting house invaded and arrests made by the police in an operation worthy of Tom Cruise in the film “Minority Report”.
The fear is indeed amongst us, not least in communities fighting for their voices to be heard. The Main Stream media has not been silenced so much as become complicit as the agenda suits their owners. Another fine expose of such real events, despite it simply glossing over much of what went on, but “Goodnight and Good Luck” the battle between Ed Murrow and Joe MacCarthy exposing the nature of the far rights willingness to abandon anything but the “fig leaf” of legal propriety is a reasonable expose.
Trump may be well beyond half way to a Police State and some of his actions may be more alarming to the rest of the world because of the profile he garners, but Starmer has gone further in an equally short time, and is proving to be equally as dangerous, to civil society, civilians and anyone with an opinion or voice and a preparedness to use it. Unfortunately for the UK Starmer has links to our “deep state” and is clearly subservient to their agenda. Future prospects for the UK are as bleak as the USA, since the thankful fall of empire, we have less of a profile worldwide and so the attention hungry Trump slurps it up. But be in no doubt, it is my view that we are in as dangerous a memonent here in the UK as they are in the USA.