This is the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, standing proudly in front of a concentration camp in El Salvador. It is the place where at least 200 men were disappeared by the Trump regime without Due Process by its militant arm ICE. It is the largest concentration camp in the world with a capacity for 40,000 human beings. It has at least 14,500 there now.

Many of the 200 men there were ambushed by masked men in unmarked cars and vans, targeting them simply because they were Brown, Latino or had tattoos that ICE goons did not understand. A gay makeup artist and a man with an “autism awareness” tattoo are among them.

This image is jarring, not only because of the fact that these men never had their right to Due Process. Not only because the image clearly shows inhuman living conditions with beds crammed full of human beings, stacked to the ceiling. But because of its historical weight.

The Nazi regime disappeared millions of people into concentration camps. First because of their supposed “crimes.” Then because of their political leanings or opinions. Then because they were Jewish. Then because of their sexuality or ethnic identity. The Pinochet regime also disappeared thousands of Chileans, taking them to stadiums to be shot or tortured, or deporting them from the country, or on to helicopters to be dropped into the ocean. Israel, which has been carrying out a Western-backed genocide for the past 18 months, is also currently locking up thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, in prisons where rape, violence and starvation are used as collective punishment.

But we need not look to the history or even current practices of other nations. The United States has done similar things in its past. From forcing Indigenous people on death marches as in the Trail of Tears, to locking up thousands of Black men in prison labour camps for merely being on the white side of town, to holding Filipinos in concentration camps in their own land, to sending thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps in the desert. Or in recent times, the soldiers photographed torturing and terrorizing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. Indeed, the US has plenty of examples of its own barbarism.

This latest chapter of American depravity is in keeping with its tradition of cruelty. But it may very well be the darkest yet. Years from now, this photo (or the accompanying video) may be used in classrooms, much like the ones used today depicting SS guards in front of Auschwitz. That is, if this dark chapter is finally forced to close forever.

Kenn Orphan, March 2025