In tracking down information to write the story of ICE rounding up nine foreigners in Hardwick on September 26, and this week trying to track them through their Vermont imprisonment, with state, ICE and third-party websites (where I came up mostly empty, by the way), it’s clear that it’s not intended to be an easy process. More information about the people being traced must be known than an outsider can piece together.
Along the way I learned Florida law enforcement officials have arrested more than 6,000 people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to a U.S. Border Patrol official as reported by the Associated Press.
That seems a far more aggressive approach than we see in Vermont. Given the difference in each state’s population, at the same rate, that would mean about 170 people would have been detained in Vermont, but the number is 80 or 90 according to a person who spoke for Migrant Justice.
Elsewhere down the rabbit hole we see federal employees who were DOGEd, funding of SNAP benefits at risk, food pantries losing funding and now, area flood mitigation projects on hold because federal workers have been furloughed due to the government shutdown.
I’m almost certain no problem ever gets solved in the life of an individual while they are blaming someone else for it. I’m similarly certain the same is true of a country.
How can a country that seems to pride itself on being exceptional, continue to believe that, when leaders of all three branches of our government can’t lead effectively.
As I was becoming more discouraged by the minute, a slickly produced U.S. Government video, overlaid with dramatic music, showing helicopters with searchlights, armed officers in battle fatigues, and handcuffed prisoners being escorted from what is said to be a Chicago apartment appeared on the heels of President Trump’s preposterous statements about his new Department of War going to war against residents in Portland and Chicago.
Until now I’d resisted the possibility that this administration is trying to destroy the entire fabric of our country, but I now no longer resist that.
With Vermont unemployment at 2.5%, it’s certain even thousands of foreigners, whether documented or not, aren’t taking jobs from those who want them.
It’s more likely those with concerns about their livelihood should be looking at the three wealthiest individuals in the U.S., who have more wealth than what’s variously reported to be between 28% and 50% of the country’s wealth.
Close to home, I’m happy to see those in our community coming together to share meals, to protect those foreigners who might be, or be mistaken for, undocumented foreigners and to fill in the funding gaps.
We’d do well to be reminded of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous quote:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
According to the holocaust encyclopedia, “There are multiple versions of the quote. Some versions include a different list of victims. This is because Niemöller often presented his lectures impromptu and changed the list of victims from lecture to lecture. At different times and in different combinations, Niemöller listed: communists, socialists, trade unionists, Jews, people with mental and physical disabilities and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Whatever the details, it’s up to all of us to recognize when our government is working to divide rather than unite us and resist the roundup.
Let us be a community that unites ourselves.
Paul Fixx, editor
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
