Tim Miller: Deporting Illegal Immigrants Is ‘Dehumanizing’ and ‘Un-American’

JANSING: “Well, some laughing there, but critics argue there’s nothing funny about keeping people in what they say are hellish conditions, especially in a state where, as the ‘Miami Herald’ reports, five people have died in ICE custody since January. The latest, a 75-year-old Cuban man who came to the United States nearly six decades ago, but died after three weeks in detention. That death now under investigation. Tim Miller is back with us. You know, when you hear those remarks from the president and Governor DeSantis, is the threat of cruelty the point here, a deterrent?”
MILLER: “I think so. The whole thing is extremely dehumanizing. Trump and DHS and Ron DeSantis, frankly, have treated immigrants and migrants in a dehumanizing way. And I think that they definitely want to scare people that are in the country and, you know, don’t have formal legal status. They want people to self-deport. And they’ve said that. Kristi Noem is running ads encouraging people to self-deport. Like these stories, you know, you’re talking about people that are not hardened criminals. And on the one hand, like with the recent exception in New Orleans, like hardened criminals don’t get out of prisons. Like you don’t need a scary, you know, action movie alligator prison. Like, that’s not an issue. What we’re talking here is about detaining people. And they’ve — and they’ve been detaining a lot of people who are not violent criminals. They’re detaining people that have allegedly committed immigration infractions. And then this man, this Cuban man that you mentioned, like the idea that somebody who’s been here for 60 years, you know, needs to be held in a cell. Like for what? There’s no — there’s no security Rationale for that. You’re not worried about risk of flight. You want these people to self-deport. So, like, the only reason to do it is what you’re saying, to try to intimidate, to try to encourage others to deport. And it’s — it’s — it’s a really UN-American policy that these guys are instituting.”