The Concentration Camps We Refuse to See

We should be more concerned about the quiet build-up of American concentration camps that is happening before our very eyes. 

That build-up is no accident.

President Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of stripping naturalized American citizens of their citizenship and has pledged to deport all immigrants he views as “non-compatible with Western civilization.”

His attacks make little distinction between unauthorized migrants and those who did it the “right way” to enter the country legally and eventually become American citizens. Authoritarians single out groups, immigrants, or anyone else they select to blame for all our problems. It is not a stretch to envision the use of ICE detention camps to imprison anyone Trump perceives as a threat to the country or his power.

My biggest fear is that our country is on the verge of repeating inhumane mistakes from our past. Our not-too-distant history includes the incarceration of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II — a shameful chapter I didn’t fully reckon with until law school, when I learned how the U.S. government justified imprisoning its own citizens.

We cannot allow it to happen again.

I’m mindful that comparing ICE facilities with the German concentration camps of WWII is controversial, but I believe it to be true, because I visited Dachau. It was primarily designed for political prisoners, but expanded to imprison and murder anyone the Nazis despised. The depravity and cruelty I witnessed there show what happens when laws meant to prevent such atrocities are ignored.

From what I saw, ICE detention centers share characteristics with concentration camps from the past.

ICE facilities are used for mass detention of civilians without trial and with punitive intent. Right now, Latinos are detained, mistreated, and dying in ICE custody. What is happening is eerily similar to how the Nazi concentration camps originally started.

Our community seems to be the primary target. Monthly detentions of Latinos without criminal records have increased sixfold and are driven largely by aggressive workplace and public-space arrests in our neighborhoods and communities.

Stephen Miller is the architect of Trump’s immigration detention policy. In the spring of 2025, it was reported that he told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that he wanted 3,000 immigration arrests a day. To meet his quota of human suffering, he demands daily updates on detention numbers, ICE hiring, deportation flights, border crossings, and detention construction.

Miller has a long history of attacking immigrants and has cemented support for this agenda by courting the white rage that found violent expression in tragedies from El Paso to Charlottesville. With the full coercive power of the president, Miller oversees the largest deportation operation in American history, seeking to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the United States.  

A record 75,000 people are currently being held in 225 separate jails or ICE detention facilities. The number of people held in ICE facilities has increased by over 75% in one year. It is a catastrophic infliction of harm on our communities, impacting primarily families, women, and children.

This unprecedented growth in ICE incarceration is the result of the enormous $45 billion in funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was provided in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Upwards of 135,000 detention beds will be available for use through the end of 2029. The Trump administration is building a massive system of incarceration to imprison large numbers of individuals.

The plan is to double ICE’s number of large-scale mega-detention facilities. To Miller and Trump, the human suffering of those detained and the impact on our communities is a numbers game. We have become statistics to them, and this dehumanization cannot stand.

The conditions resulting from such rapid growth have worsened and have become even more inhumane. Detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas report nightmare conditions of inedible food, contaminated drinking water, and inadequate medical care. Since Dilley reopened last year, over half of the 3,500 people in the detention center are children.

People are profiting from human suffering. It is no surprise that the biggest contractors of building and managing detention centers have posted record revenue in 2025. The two largest, CoreCivic and GEO Group, have told ICE they can add another 19,000 beds immediately, increasing their profits exponentially.

The expansion has had another alarming consequence: the now common practice of detaining U.S. citizens. As a civil rights lawyer, I can tell you that under no circumstances can ICE detain a U.S. citizen for being undocumented.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently made it worse. His decision now allows race to be considered during immigration sweeps, meaning ICE can question anyone about their immigration status without probable cause. Over 170 US citizens have been detained and held, in some cases for months. ICE agents have arrested Native Americans even when presented with a tribal federal ID.

Last October, over 200 ICE agents, along with a local sheriff, raided a community horse race in Wilder, Idaho. They detained over 475 people, of whom 375 were U.S. citizens or legal residents who were eventually released.

It is outrageous that Latino families merely attending a local cultural event became targets for mass arrests by ICE and local law enforcement.

The incompetence, lack of good sense, and poor training should result in the immediate termination of such agents.

If you are like me, you sometimes feel helpless and don’t have a clear path for how to react. But I believe it is imperative that we remain vigilant. We must monitor every activity associated with ICE detention centers and demand accountability from all levels of government. It’s the only way to ensure they do not evolve into something more sinister.

If you still think that unlawful imprisonment can’t happen to you, I encourage you to study Korematsu v. the United States. This was a landmark Supreme Court case that upheld the forced relocation and internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII. The Supreme Court ruled the internment was a constitutional “military necessity.” The decision is widely criticized as a horrible violation of civil liberties. Not until 2018 — 74 years later — did the Supreme Court formally state that Korematsu has no place in law under the Constitution.

History teaches us that power can be used to punish. Someone with such a flawed understanding of the Constitution cannot be allowed to repeat another inhuman mistake.

I fear this misjudgment is happening again.

Mauro Morales is a retired attorney and civil rights leader who spent 25 years in federal service, most recently as Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He also served in the Obama Administration, including senior roles at the Office of Personnel Management, and previously worked in private practice and on Capitol Hill.

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Journalist Granted Bond: From The Tennessee Lookout, “Estefany Rodríguez, the Nashville Spanish-language news reporter arrested by ICE, was granted a $10,000 bond Monday but remains detained in Louisiana after government lawyers reserved their right to appeal, according to her attorney. Joel Coxander, Rodríguez’s attorney, said she has been subject to ‘inhumane and difficult treatment’ since her arrest in Nashville by ICE agents on March 4.“

Julio Ricardo Varela edited and published this edition of The Latino Newsletter.

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