this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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From the article (thanks @[email protected]) it's completely clear that:
a. This is just a temporary holding camp until the illegal migrants can be repatriated back to their original countries
b. This isn't even a US camp - it's a Panamanian camp - so if you want to be mad about the unconfirmed conditions of the camp, you should be mad at Panama
c. This is in no way a concentration camp, and divisive, intentionally inflammatory one-liners like this from talking heads on Twitter-likes continue to be the bane of public discourse.
Nothing is more permanent than temporary.
If they were motivated to do permanent well, they wouldn't have bothered with temporary.
Panama all but made it clear that they don't even want these migrants in the first place - why on earth would they then imprison them permanently on their soil at significant cost and potential political backlash now that they're out of the US's jurisdiction?
Like, it's obviously possible that's the case, but I can't see a reason to do so that makes any sense.
Do they have a choice? Are alternatives mired in bureaucracy? Can we JAQ all day?
I'm commenting on specifically on your point of being "just a temporary" camp somehow excusing poor conditions. If I only put my dick in your ass temporarily, does that not infringe on your dignity as a person?
Why is panama taking them in the first place if there was somewhere else for them to go?
The article doesn't address that, so I'd be speculating, but if I had to guess, I'd say either:
or, also quite likely given how much of a petty dick Trump is:
That's kind of tangential to the point I'm making. I'm trying to say that I don't think these people can be legitimately returned. Making them another state's problem is a way to make it out of sight, out of mind, and make it hard for people to protest. Last time, under Trump 1, there was a lot of (rightful) fuss about the detainment camps and how the Trump administration argued that they shouldn't be required to provide blankets, soap, and lights that turn off at night. No need to be too concerned with any of those details if it's happening half a world away, see?
I'm not sure what you mean by "legitimately returned"? Do you mean that Panama can't be sure of their place of origin?
I fully agree that the detainment camps that Trump inherited from Obama were inhumane, but in my opinion a lot of that was due to the unreasonably long amount of time people were forced to spend in them. Most of those conditions (obviously not refusing to provide soap, turn the lights off, etc. - that was just intentional cruelty) are reasonable for a few weeks or so, as a temporary stop-gap, but after months of detainment it definitely becomes inhumane.
We don't have any evidence that the Panamanian camps are doing any of those things though, or why Panama would want to treat them like that.
If anything, this seems like an improvement.
I mean that:
These kinds of operations always end up scooping up actual US citizens. That's what happens when you break a few eggs to make an omelette.
The countries of origin might either not be known (in the case of someone in the country since they were a small child) or might not recognize them as a citizen for a variety of reasons, including paperwork cock-ups.
The country of origin might refuse to repatriate the person, because you can't just dump a shitload of people on a poor country all at once and expect no consequences. It takes time to ramp up supply chains in response to demand. And before you say "Ah Ha! So you ARE against immigration!" No, immigration has largely been at a pace that the US could easily absorb, especially if we had sensible policies around how we build cities. If we actually do deport 11 million people in the first year, there's going to be consequences for that. You don't just take 11 million people worth of demand and economic production out of an economy virtually overnight and not have consequences. This whole thing is honestly like when a cartoon character sticks a shotgun in a hole and ends up blowing their own ass off. That's us right now.
As for the camps being an improvement, I'm sure it's more convenient for the Trump administration, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You should always, always have a healthy doubt of the government.
Hehe, permanently.
There's an easy way to reduce the number of prisoners and make it temporary once the camp becomes too expensive.
I'm pretty sure it's also lined with inflammatory rhetoric, so I think I'll just keep reading original sources and waiting for facts that are supported by evidence.
If the past 8 years aren't enough for you to see where things are headed, I'm guessing you are in the "it's not happening until it affects me personally" camp.
Not quite sure what the past 8 years have to do with the Panamanian government, but I am certainly in the "I'm not going to assume that Panama of all places is running a concentration camp until I see some actual evidence of it" camp, especially when they probably don't want these migrants anyway, and don't seem to have a reason to vindictively mistreat them like the US does.
a. Temporarily concentrating a group of people together in a camp is still a concentration camp.
b. Then why are the US getting involved and sending their own undesirables there? At best, this is a bad thing Panama are doing, and the US said "hey cool we wanna remove people from society too but don't want to build our own concentration camps because that'd look bad, can we send them to yours pls?"
a. Sure, if we're disingenuously ignoring the meanings and implications of words today for some reason.
b. For the first part of this question, here's a response I made elsewhere that addresses it:
"The article doesn’t address that, so I’d be speculating, but if I had to guess, I’d say either:
or, also quite likely given how much of a petty dick Trump is:
For the second part of your b. point, I don't see a reason that this is a bad thing for Panama to do, even if it sucks that they're the ones having to do it. This isn't a concentration camp - it's a temporary camp until the migrants can be repatriated.
Except there are examples of "temporary" not meaning temporary in similar cases, and we didn't even have to leave the post-cold war United States to find one.
Temporary or not, this is not humane and should not be tolerated by either government. Everybody deserves a basic level of decency. Or would you like to stay in a cage, even if for a couple of weeks? It is dehumanising.
What? Of course it's humane - all of their needs are being met, and they're only there temporarily.
And yes, if I entered another country illegally, I would fully expect to be locked up until I could be repatriated, whether in a jail cell or a cage, and they would be fully justified in doing so.
Extended detainment in a cage might eventually become inhumane though, so if against all odds this setup isn't temporary, then yeah, I'd probably agree that it's inhumane.
Why?
Outsourcing the concentration camps doesn't make it any better.
Source that the Panamanian location is a concentration camp? Random Twit-heads don't count.
How is this not a concentration camp? Idk what your definition of a concentration camp is but rounding people up in a camp with poor conditions sounds like a concentration camp to me.
@[email protected] 3 months
@octopus_ink Ok, I will remind you on Tuesday May 20, 2025 at 8:14 PM UTC.
@Rozauhtuno Ok, I will remind you on Tuesday May 20, 2025 at 6:02 PM UTC.
That's fair. I guess we'll see. Just because the camp remains open doesn't mean that people aren't being repatriated in a timely manner though.
Wow you dodge the entire issue of the US Constitution and legal Asylum so well. I'd like to see you in a Dodgeball game.
cope and seethe. shove your concern trolling somewhere else
??
Are you a mouthpiece for the Panamanian government? Are you in Panama inspecting these camps? Why are you so defensive for this administration?
Nope - I just don't see any reason to assume the worst of a government when I have no evidence that they deserve that assumption. If this were about a camp actually in the US, I'd be a lot more prepared to believe that the conditions were inhumane.
They sent people to the jungle without shelter. Do you really think they plan to meet all of their needs? And if they are just doing their best to cope with the migrants, then the US is responsible for sending them to a place that could not handle them.
I suppose that's possible, but Imma need a source for that claim, because it's definitely not in the article I read. That seems more like the sort of blind, knee-jerk reaction the twit-head in the pic is intending to elicit with their inflammatory one-liner.
All of the needs required of a brief detainment before repatriation? Yeah, I see no reason why Panama wouldn't do that, especially since they probably want these people out of Panama as soon as possible.
They seem to be handling them just fine. I agree that the US sending them there was a dick move, and probably an attempt at strongarm tactics on Trump's part, but Trump being a dick doesn't suddenly mean that Panama is running a concentration camp, as the talking head is asserting to make people angry enough to engage en masse with their "content".
I doubt it's as nice as a zoo though