SAN ANTONIO. DO NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN IN YOUR CITY

Reporting this past week said that the Department of Homeland Security has secured at least three giant warehouse facilities to detain immigrants before they are deported by ICE. $87.4M for one outside Philadelphia. $70M for one the size of seven football fields in Surprise, AZ, outside Phoenix. And $37M for a warehouse of nearly 640,000 sq ft for another outside San Antonio. Texas is allowing an American concentration camp outside the largest, brownest city in the state. Officials from Surprise answered concerns about the federal facility with a statement saying: “The City was not aware that there were efforts underway to purchase the building, was not notified of the transaction by any of the parties involved and has not been contacted by DHS or any federal agency about the intended use of the building. It’s important to note, Federal projects are not subject to local regulations, such as zoning.” On Tuesday, February 3, more than a 1000 people turned out for the Surprise City Council meeting to oppose the establishment of the federal detention center. One of the speakers reminded the council of Ohrdruf, the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops, on April 4, 1945. He said: “The U.S. Army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps. A U.S. Army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes without muttering a word that they were to blame. One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was ‘done by a few people,’ and ‘you cannot blame us all.’ And the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said: ‘This was done by those that the German people chose to lead them, and all are responsible.’ “The morning after the tour, the mayor of Ohrdruf killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don’t know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. I ask you to consider what the mayor of Ohrdruf might have thought before he died. Maybe he felt like a victim. He might have thought, ‘How is this my fault? I had no jurisdiction over this.’ Maybe he would have said, ‘This site was not subject to local zoning, what could I do?’ But I think, when he reflected on the suffering that occurred at this camp, just outside of town, that those words would have sounded hollow even to him. Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.” Yes we are. And yes you are. And we all will be held to account by the history to come. We the people are doing our part to be on the right side of that history. You and every other elected official who knows better and stays silent, are not.