Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in Custody

In the name of anti-terror, and in the name of being tough on illegal immigration, we have regressed fifty years to how prisons in the darkest part of the South treated poor blacks. Immigrants in custody aren't treated as well as livestock or property.

We have taught our employees that immigrants who run afoul of the system are not human. We have taken the established legal position that citizens have some rights that non-citizens do not, and expanded it to the full extent that non-citizens have no rights we are bound to respect.

This is evil. We as a nation have chosen to do evil to other humans in the only way that humans can do evil to other humans, by declaring them non-human.

We have chosen to do this.

If we are to save America's soul, we must choose to fix what we have done, to choose moral and right behavior, to treat everyone with the full respect and dignity they are entitled to by their very existence.

It is not the easiest choice. It will cost money, it will cost time and effort. It will require us to give us some tiny measure of our own comfort and safety in order to improve the lot of people who are not us. But that is the fundamental compact of society. We accept small risks and forego small rewards in order that everyone can avoid the big risks and reap the big rewards.

Moreover, we may not stand in splendid isolation from the world. We are a part of the world; it is at our fingertips wherever we turn. If we speculatively improve our own immediate and marginal safety by evil treatment of non-citizens, we make ourselves vulnerable to a whole world of non-citizens who will rightfully fear and resent our evil treatment of themselves and their relatives, friends, and neighbors. What we visit upon our prisoners today will be revisited upon us, directly or indirectly, and we will suffer punishment for our evil here on Earth.

We hold this truth to be self-evident: All humans are created equal.

We are a great country. We deserve to be held to that standard.