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🏛️ These detainment centers aren't going to fill themselves

By Baron Ursin de Paresse

One of the most successful genres of right-wing “news” programming is to paint cities in left-leaning states as dystopian nightmares overrun with hordes of unhoused drug users and criminals.

These reports often concentrate on areas of these cities where homeless folks congregate, such as Skid Row in Los Angeles, and then very effectively couple those images with sweeping statements about how the entirety of the city is in disarray. Trump even mentioned it on the campaign trail.

“The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs,” Trump said in a campaign video posted online in April 2023. “There is nothing compassionate about letting these individuals live in filth and squalor rather than getting them the help that they need.”

Yesterday, Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder On America’s Streets,” The order encourages local governments to revive the practice of civil commitment, a legal process that places people in treatment facilities without their consent, and directs federal resources and efforts to assist that revival.  

Specifically, the order calls for shifting homeless individuals and others into “long-term” institutions for “humane treatment” to “restore public order”.

Addressing the issues of homelessness in America is critical. Homelessness increased by 12% last year, and approximately 771,000 people experienced homelessness in the United States.

But this executive order, coupled with several other developments such as billions of dollars being allocated by Congress for the construction of new detention centers, should scare the ever-loving shit out of all of us.

To illustrate why, please allow me a brief detour.

In my early days as a reporter, working in a deep-Red state in the Northwest of this country, the Republican controlled legislature attempted to pass one of those bills that don’t really address anything that matters, but shovel a healthy dose of “owning the Libs” directly into the gullets of their bloodthirsty base.

The bill sought to criminalize the burning of the American flag. I don’t recall exactly what prompted it, maybe it was ANTIFA or protests or the Muslim jihadists that are perpetually ready to invade rural America any day now.

However, I quickly noticed that the bill did not clarify under which circumstances burning the American flag would be considered a criminal offense. As some may know, the only way to properly “retire” a battered or used American flag is to burn it. I had recently had the honor of photographing and reporting on a local American Legion chapter retiring hundreds of flags they had been sent.

With this fresh on my mind, I asked a Facebook rival of mine who was then serving as the communications director for a mini-Heritage Foundation-type organization in the state, a simple question:

“Wouldn’t this bill criminalize flag retirement ceremonies?”

“That’s not the intent of the bill and you know it,” he smugly replied.

I countered that the bill did not define flag retirement as a permitted instance of flag burning, so it could be considered a criminal offense.

I don’t believe he responded to that counterargument, which is unsurprising. The bill didn’t manage to make it through committee anyways. Now, let’s leave my tequila-soaked history in the rearview and get back to the matter at hand.  

 When the government issues sweeping orders and statutes, that same government assures the people its intentions are pure and good. In this case, the stated purpose is to curb homelessness and get people the treatment they need for mental health and addiction issues.

But, if the history of Trump and the MAGA movement has shown us anything, it’s that we cannot simply take what is said at face value. Unfortunately, the same goes for this executive order.

Let’s break down a couple key portions of the order to demonstrate how this thing sets the stage for an even greater level of authoritarian control to creep into the country.

In Section Three of the order, titled “Fighting Vagrancy on America’s Streets”, Trump instructs cabinet members to:

“enforce, and where necessary, adopt, standards that address individuals who are a danger to themselves or others and suffer from serious mental illness or substance use disorder, or who are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves, through assisted outpatient treatment or by moving them into treatment centers or other appropriate facilities via civil commitment or other available means, to the maximum extent permitted by law.”

Remember, this executive order comes from the same president who, on the campaign trail, called Democrats “evil” and “radical left lunatics” before claiming they were more dangerous than countries the United States has an adversarial relationship with.

“They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick,” Trump said during a 2024 Fox News town hall with women voters in Georgia. “We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult are, you know, the Pelosi’s, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil.”

That same take on anything opposing the dear leader — left, center, right, or otherwise — has been widely adopted by the MAGA movement. There’s even a fun, medical-sounding term for it — Trump Derangement Syndrome.

“A danger to themselves or others and suffer from a serious mental illness…”

It’s also important to note the term vagrancy in the title of the section.

That term was used in the Jim Crow South as a key word to continue the subjugation of black communities. Laws passed in southern states during the time period included vagrancy statutes, which criminalized unemployment, homelessness, and anyone deemed “idle” by law enforcement, which had a vested interest in keeping black Americans in a cycle of poverty and dependence on the same people who previously bought and sold them like cattle.

Surely the use of vagrancy is just a coincidence, right? It’s not as though the MAGA-controlled government is also stripping all sorts of social safety nets that help keep people out of homelessness. It’s not like there will be a sudden need for cheap labor across the country if and when Trump’s immigration policy marches to its intended solution. It’s not like everyone involved in the for-profit industry of detaining human beings will suddenly pivot to more noble endeavors if there’s no one to fill their cages.

It's not like approximately half of the country has been spoon-fed a steady stream of agitating lies about people who have different political views, or are on a lower rung of the socio-economic ladder.

Those same people will likely cheer this on, once they hear about it from “trusted sources” and take to social media to battle with anyone who dares disagree or express concern. One day soon, they could even play an active role in getting their social-media rivals committed.

In the meantime, the rapid shock and awe campaign will go on as we march ever closer to the twisted endgame dreamt up by the ruling class. I’ll keep asking myself the same damn question, the one that gets harder and harder to try to answer: Will there come a time when enough of us stop marching?

—Baron