Mahmoud Khalil Is the First Activist to Be Disappeared by Trump
Mahmoud Khalil Is the First Activist to Be Disappeared by Trump
The detention and attempted deportation of Khalil is a test by Trump to see how far he can go—and a test for us to see how hard we will fight back.
You're viewing a single thread.
-
The title here is very misleading (probably for clicks). Both his supporters and the media still onoe where he is... in a Detention Facility in Louisiana.
-
There was a significant length of time when they didn't.
Both of the white people who were recently accidentally thrown by ICE into detention centers designed for brown people reported (a) that they were horrifying, with nonstop screaming, solitary confinement, shortages of fundamental human things like clothing and towels, that kind of thing (b) there were people who had been there for a long, long time (the more recent one said "years"). Reportedly, even for white people who clearly don't "belong there," there is a shortage of judges who might ever give them a hearing which would lead quickly to them being able to get out, and so in they stay.
Khalil has been disappeared. The fact that people temporarily know where he is after not knowing for a few days (!), and that they found someone who was an "immigrant" and so ICE had some kind of fig-leaf of justification to randomly snatch because Trump told them to, in no way detracts from the horrifying nature of what's going on. I think "disappeared" is a pretty accurate description even if it's been temporarily announced where he is.
I don't know what to do. This article is one of the first I've read in the press that is as alarmed as people should be about what is going on.
-
I wonder who runs places like that. They should stop and it should be looked into.
-
As I understand it, the worst places are usually run by private companies contracted by ICE, and operated day-to-day by some of the worst people you could imagine.
-
-
which white people are you talking about? Why do you report their word specifically?
-
These white people:
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/04/world/german-detained-ice-intl-latam/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80y3yx1jdyo
The point that I'm making, pointing out that they're white, is that the news is all of a sudden concerned about them, because they're white, because the news is racist. Brown people have been going through that same horrifying system for years and years now, and because they "belonged there" or something, unlike those pretty white girls who do not, no one gave a shit.
(I mean, no one in a position to free them cares about the white girls either, but the news is at least acknowledging that it's something bad that this is happening to them. They talk to family members, emphasize that they didn't really do anything wrong, that kind of thing. It's like some kind of confusing terrible mistake that the system is suddenly being weaponized on these innocent people. When brown people are reported to be suffering those same abuses, or much much worse, they're reported on in a much more abstract way. Like animals that are having trouble surviving in some particular environment, but not like a problem.)
-
I assumed due to the port of entry that this was meant for hispanic people, not "brown" people.
-
Your quote marks and your original question sound like you're really trying hard to find something offensive about the way I am saying it. Good luck! I hope you find some enemies you can be performatively anti-racist against, if that is in fact your goal. If that's not your goal, then I would modify your language, because you're making it sound like that's your goal, and there are better things to be upset about in the modern day than being hyper-vigilant about anything that sounds offensive and then then proudly pointing out to everyone that it's offensive.
(Well, I mean yes, the nature of the system is offensive, and I'm aiming to be direct about how it behaves, so in that sense maybe my language is offensive. I think it is extremely clear that the system is meant for Khalil, though, and he's not Hispanic. He is brown. I said what I said, the way I said it, for a reason.)
-
The reason is because I don't want people scrolling through my comment history taking this out of context and thinking I'm somebody who unironically and unquotatively uses the term «brown people». (Guillemets as a truce, ok?) I won't deny that it's performative.
-
Ha, fair enough. I won't say you are wrong about someone doing that. My observation has been:
- Lemmy has vanishingly few people who are actually racist/transphobic/in favor of genocide/whatever
- Lemmy has a ton of people who are convinced that those people are all over the place, and devote a really substantial amount of mental energy into trying to find something they can misinterpret as being one of those things and then go on the attack (also periodically assuring one another that there are definitely a ton of those people all over the place, and attacking them to each other)
My advice would be to avoid the places where group 2 likes to congregate, because they tend to be silly places that will give people a distorted view of what's real after a while.
-
I kind of find that (2) is pretty pervasive though. I think it's one of lemmy's biggest flaws right now. That's why I was so careful with the quotes, but I guess it backfired (sorry). Hopefully we can all take a chill pill collectively at some point...
-
-
-
-
-
-
Being disappeared means one day someone vanishes. No-one knows where they are, what happened to them, or who is responsible. This is not that.
-
That literally happened and it was the high profile nature that got him found. So many people without the resources and support do lose family members this way.
-
They attempted to do this to this person.
-
-
-
They didn't at first... and if it hadn't gotten so much attention, who's to say what could have happened?
-
People’s whereabouts being uncertain just after detention is simply standard bureaucracy. It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of being disappeared.
-
There is not even a vague pretense that they had the bureaucratic authority to snatch him, or that it's for any reason other than him being opposed to their policies politically and speaking up about it.
He has a green card. He is not accused of a crime. They've simply decided that they can snatch people they don't like and do whatever they want with them. And you know what? So far, they're right.
-
Which is shitty, but not near the level of being disappeared.
-
That's... literally what it is? Is there a magical threshold of time or number of protesters illegally whisked away where it suddenly becomes a problem?
Get your head out of your ass
-
-
-
-
-
Not the first time nor the last headlines will lie.
-