The similarities between President Donald Trump’s resuming term and the dark history that follows generations of grief and pain are unavoidably present. Kicking off his reign of terror, Trump enacted several new policies and laws under his recent administration, one of those being the creation of a separate migrant detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. This has caused a outpour of fear to flow from the media. Families and friends fear for the safety of their loved ones, and prayers are exchanged in hopes that safety follows those being persecuted.
The detention center for a select group of people, or in the words of the president, “Criminal Aliens,” begs the question of whether or not history is repeating itself.
The Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp has gone through preparations to house 30,000 immigrants, which has surpassed previous population rates at the camp by thousands.
The fear this camp has caused has reached the hearts of those beyond the U.S., to those in Europe who endured similar separation measurements during the Holocaust in World War ll. For some reason, President Trump, along with his supporters, feel the need to demonize immigrants, by making them seem inhuman and inferior to Americans when in reality, they are still people.
This, in turn, draws similarities between Trump and the German dictator who was responsible for the death of 11 million human beings who were seen as animals, criminals and inhuman. Even today, Hitler’s reign of terror has left a tarnished stain on this world’s history, inspiring the saying, “We will not go back.” So, after all that we have gone through as citizens of this world, why are we so adamant about returning to our past mistakes?
In addition to European history repeating itself, Trump’s renovated detention center in Guantanamo Bay also rips a page from the Policy of Internment used in WWll. During this time, the U.S. forcefully escorted more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to isolated camps in Arizona and Arkansas, for no other reason than the mere suspicion that they were spies for Japan. What is happening now is no different. For some immigrants, the only crime they committed was leaving their homes to start somewhere new and safe without the proper papers to do so.
What qualities define an American? Being born in America may be the obvious answer; however, Trump’s agenda to eliminate birthright citizenship contradicts that assumption altogether. So, what makes a “true” American? Why are we the judge of that?
The utilization of degrading names such as criminals, illegal, aliens and in some cases, according to President Trump, animals, dehumanizes the fact that these people migrating to the U.S. in search of a better life, are just that — people. They are people with families and friends, hopes and dreams and overall, people who feel the same as you and I do.
The detention center in Guantánamo Bay is a slap in the face to the veterans who witnessed the horrors of concentration camps, and to all other victims of the Policy of Internment who had their lives uprooted like it was nothing. Immigrants are still people, and being born in a different location does not mean anything when we were all born in the same way. The people coming to the U.S. should come here legally, of course, but rather than treating them with disrespect they do not deserve, the U.S. government should be helping them migrate here under the right jurisdiction.
The separation of groups of people based on race and ethnicity has been an issue for centuries, and though we have come a long way, for every step we take forward, we take a bigger step back. The ideals of which the U.S. of America tries to uphold, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, are what we should strive for as a nation.
So what is the definition of a true American? Will we ever know?
