Commentary: The first substantial U.S. detention program began in 1838 under the auspices of President Martin Van Buren, who marshaled the manpower of over 7,000 soldiers. Led by General Winfield Scott, Van Buren ordered the eviction of the entire Cherokee nation from their tribal lands in the south and forced them to trek 1,200 miles west to reservations in Oklahoma. Before they were put on the "Trail of Tears", they were detained in detention centers called "emigration depots." These forts existed in North Carolina, as well as Chattanooga, Tennessee and Fort Payne, Alabama.
During the American Civil War, thousands of freed slaves from the plantations were recaptured by the Union army and put into hard labor camps. Women and children were locked away in these camps and left to die from starvation and diseases such as smallpox. One of these concentration camps was called the Devil's Punchbowl because it was located at the bottom of a cavernous pit with trees located on the bluffs above.
Nearly a half-century later, at the apex of the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson, fearing the subversive potential of Germans and German Americans, set up two internment camps in Hot Springs, N.C., and Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Codifying Wilson's fears, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer decreed that "All aliens interned by the government are regarded as enemies, and their property is treated accordingly."
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which allowed the military to designate areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded." The groundwork for this Executive Order was firmly planted when the 1940 census introduced a new question that required all respondents to include their ethnicity. Also in 1940, a new law was passed so that all aliens over the age of 14 had to be registered.
These extreme measures were followed by perhaps the single most unconstitutional order ever issued in our nation’s history. The Emergency Detention Act of 1950- otherwise known as the McCarran Internal Security Act- was a provision that authorized the construction of six concentration camps in 1952 in the event that the U.S. government declare a state of emergency. These camps were intended to detain communists, anti-war activists, and other alleged dissidents. This Act required that the President, in an emergency, assume the right to arrest and detain persons who he believed might engage in espionage. It also created a Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) to effectively monitor the finances and activities of millions of Americans.
And more recently, in 2002, the United States government, in response to the threat of global terrorism, opened up the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba and the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan. Due to the brave reporting of Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the New York Times, the world now know that these facilities were the site of cruelty "tantamount to torture." Amnesty International even referred to Guantanamo Bay as 'the Gulag of our times."
With these examples in mind, this is the basic point I want to make. Rather than an isolated case of abuse by a rogue president, the migrant detention facilities on the U.S. southern border are part of a brutal legacy that has sanctioned fear, prejudice, and exclusion from the highest office in American politics. This legacy is one that began with the forced removal of Native Americans in the first part of the 19th century. In other words, rather than being an unparalleled architect of moral barbarism, President Trump is merely following in the footsteps of his predecessors (in some cases, leaders of tremendous historical acclaim such as FDR and Woodrow Wilson).
Does this make what Trump is doing right? Not at all. Does it make the unsanitary and unnecessary detention of migrant children justifiable? Absolutely not. But it does put this travesty in context. There is a reason that this evil has persisted as long as it has on the border. There is a reason that these conditions persist in the face of deafening condemnation. Americans (white Americans especially) and not just Trump and his base-are far too comfortable with confinement and abuse as a solution to confronting the challenge posed by the human rights of the other. The same reason the majority of white America accepted the removal of Native Americans from Georgia and North Carolina, is part of the same reason why the majority of Americans are indifferent to the plight of Honduran and Salvadoran children. It's really that simple.
I often wonder how different things would be in our country if the majority of us actually embraced the words of a real American hero. It was Thomas Paine who once wrote, "Whatever is my right as a person is also the right of another."
George Cassidy Payne is a SUNY Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Finger Lakes Community College.