An Open Letter to Rosie O’Donnell About ICE, Obama, Trump and the History You Apparently Missed
BY; DAIMAN TEER for THE SIMPLETON STAR
Dear Rosie, aka The Imbecile of Ireland
You have once again discovered a word you like and decided to beat it to death.
This time, it is “concentration camps.”
You have apparently decided that immigration detention facilities operated by Donald Trump are concentration camps, and you have wrapped the whole subject in the usual rhetoric about fascism, children and Nazi Germany. It is certainly possible to have serious disagreements with Trump’s immigration policies. It is possible to believe that detention conditions are unacceptable. It is possible to oppose deportations altogether. Those are legitimate political positions.
But before you start throwing around historical terminology with the confidence of someone who has just swallowed an encyclopedia, you might want to learn something about the institution you are condemning.
ICE did not spring into existence when Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Immigration detention did not begin with Donald Trump.
And, Rosie, here is the part that must be particularly uncomfortable for you: Barack Obama had an enormous immigration-enforcement apparatus, too.
During Obama’s presidency, ICE detained and deported immigrants. The Obama administration operated detention facilities. In fact, Obama’s administration became known for aggressive immigration enforcement, and fiscal year 2013 saw more than 432,000 formal deportations, more than any single year of Trump’s first presidency.
Now let’s talk about Tom Homan.
You know Tom Homan. Or at least you probably know the version of Tom Homan that television commentators have handed you.
Today Homan is one of Trump’s most prominent immigration officials. But before he became associated with Trump, Homan was a senior ICE official under Barack Obama. In 2013, Obama appointed him Executive Associate Director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, the agency’s top enforcement position. Homan was responsible for an operation involving thousands of officers and the detention and removal of illegal immigrants.
And then something really inconvenient happened.
In 2015, during Obama’s presidency, Tom Homan received the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Service, the federal government’s highest career civil-service honor. The award recognized extraordinary sustained performance by senior federal executives.
Homan himself has repeatedly pointed out the irony. He has said that Obama gave him the award because he was doing the job he was supposed to do: enforcing immigration law.
So here’s the question, Rosie:
What did you call those detention facilities when Barack Obama was president?
Were they concentration camps then?
Was Tom Homan a concentration-camp administrator before he became Trump’s “border czar”?
Was the immigration enforcement system acceptable because a Democrat occupied the Oval Office?
Or is it possible that the subject is considerably more complicated than the cartoon version you present to your audience?
Before you start comparing everything you dislike about American immigration policy to Nazi Germany, you might want to remember something rather basic: words have meanings, history has context, and governments do not suddenly acquire institutions simply because the president changes political parties.
Trump’s immigration policies can be criticized. Homan’s policies can be criticized. ICE can be criticized. Detention conditions can be investigated and condemned where appropriate.
But if your argument depends upon pretending that immigration detention was invented by Donald Trump, you aren’t making a serious argument.
You’re making a political performance.
And Rosie, after all these years, you should be capable of better than that.
Do some homework before you reach for the Nazi analogies.
It won’t hurt.
And you might even learn something.
BIBLE VERSE
“The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.”— Proverbs 18:15 (KJV)
WHY WE CHOSE THIS VERSE
We chose Proverbs 18:15 because knowledge is supposed to come before judgment. Unfortunately, in the modern political world, that order has been reversed. People decide what they believe, find the words that make their side feel righteous, and then go looking for facts afterward. When the subject is something as serious as immigration detention, presidential policy and the history of ICE, that isn’t merely irritating. It is intellectually irresponsible. Before condemning Trump, Obama, Homan or anyone else, perhaps we should first understand what they actually did. The Bible has a rather simple prescription for that: seek knowledge.
A PRAYER FOR ROSIE O’DONNELL
Lord, give us the wisdom to know the difference between outrage and understanding, between political theater and historical fact, and between something we have actually learned and something somebody on television told us to believe.
Give Rosie O’Donnell the curiosity to look backward before she starts screaming forward. Let her discover that immigration enforcement did not begin with Donald Trump, that ICE did not magically appear when Republicans took control of the White House, and that history is considerably more complicated than a political slogan.
And Lord, if it isn’t asking too much, give all of us the humility to admit when we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.
Amen.
