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Hundreds Of Former 'Gator Gulag' Prisoners Can't Be Found, Is That Bad? (www.wonkette.com)

submitted 2 days ago by homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world to c/usa@midwest.social

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined.

Hey, remember how back in 2018 Trump’s immigration people just didn’t bother keeping records to match parents to the children they took away at the border, and as late as 2024, as many as 1,360 children still couldn’t be returned to their families? These detainees are adults, though, so maybe disappearing them from official records is less scandalous. They’re only illegals, so it’s not like they’re people.

. . . “It became a game of chicken to see who’s going to blink first, to see if the client’s going to say ‘I don’t want to be detained in these conditions, just send me back,’” said Miami immigration attorney Alex Solomiany.

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[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 32 points 2 days ago (2 children)

During the 1960s civil rights movement, some civil rights workers disappeared in the deep south, and federal cops went down and started investigating and started searching the local swamp to see if they could find their bodies.

They started finding tons of bodies. They had to keep going for quite a while before they found the specific bodies they'd been looking for, and some of the corpses they found were never identified.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250731-how-the-mississippi-burning-murders-sparked-landmark-change-in-the-us

US history is not always a nice place to be.

[–] LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

police in the New York City region would sometimes use the unofficial term “no humans involved” (N.H.I.) to describe the deaths of sex workers, transients, drug users, people of color and other people they did feel worthy of investigation. He claims that this unofficial police practice of the 1970 and 80s allowed serial killers like Richard Cottingham, who preyed upon sex workers, to get away with their horrendous killing sprees.

The acronym was also used by police for some of the victims of serial killer Lonnie Franklin, dubbed the “Grim Sleeper,” Vanity Fair reported — likely because he killed people who were Black and used drugs.

“Certain sections of the LAPD perceive these people as their enemies,” Nick Broomfield, the director of “Tales of the Grim Sleeper,” told the outlet in 2014. “They consider them to be nonhumans, not in any way a useful section of the community. This behavior [dubbing people as nonhuman] wouldn’t be tolerated for a minute in a white, affluent neighborhood."

As the series pointed out, Little got away with killing for decades — he is believed to have killed more than 100 people — because of whom he targeted.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/police-acronym-n-h-no-113300755.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAM6mnZqJLe5BheLVgOJJ1dlUMCY4IuVQhG6bSffWow5NBULR0CIFB3782tB-LiButrIxuxOt-NVPQRPtZWD-ow4vl1uicz-M6JIM_y3Ui0e21vz_b2BEB74SNEOOS2YnYpMbMclxdjGFm4p11qBxH8Pufg2WRQKN1FdwQ1sEC5S6

I don't think this practice really ended (designating people not worthy of investigation), especially for Native Americans and Latinos, and it'll be in full force for these poor victims. Plus the FBI and law enforcement is being directed to focus 20% or more of their agents, money, and time to immigration instead of investigations, so there's less people to even do the work if they even wanted to.

r/RBI, the investigative/retired cop forums, and The Grateful Doe project are kinda what we will have to fall back on and tbh people have BEEN relying on since George Floyd and before. Police REFUSE to do many investigations and prefer video evidence thse days because they are younger - I don't even think many know HOW to investigate without video footage. I mean that emphatically and literally. Please volunteer with them if you want and feel motivated.

[–] Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

By not always, do you mean never?

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There have been plenty of times when if you're in the right zip code and you have the right ethnicity, it's honestly a pretty great place. It just doesn't stay that way automatically, and where it goes if people don't keep fighting it into shape is pretty horrifying.

[–] Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So sometimes, in select places, for select people

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 3 points 2 days ago

Yeah, pretty much.

Every single American except the 1% used to work in conditions much worse than an Amazon warehouse, and then they spent several decades fighting for better, and after a while it worked, and that's why your grandad had a union and could buy a house in his 20s.

Black people used to not be able to vote and could be killed for more or less no reason but "uppity," and then everyone fought for better for several decades, and long story short one of them became the president.

My point is, you can fight for better, or it can stay as shit (and in fact get worse). Pretty much all those select places and select people were created to at least some extent by the people that came before them fighting against the injustice and corruption, instead of just saying "what a bunch of bullshit, there is corruption and there shouldn't be." You can't always make it happen for you but over time it happens for the next people up. Or it goes down.