We’re not hiding our faces

Demonstrators concerned about layoffs at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center make their presence known to tourists going to the U.S. Forest Service facility. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Independent)

A group of 10 or 12 of us show up on the Glacier Spur Road once a week to let our embattled federal workers know that we support them and care deeply about them, and to let visitors know of the mass staff firings at the glacier visitor center they are headed towards.

We hold signs like “Staff Fired” and “Families Disrupted” as cars and taxis and buses drive by — and often honk in support. We talk to tourists walking toward the glacier, always respecting them if they are not interested, but engaging in many conversations with people from other countries and other cities in the United States who are horrified at what is happening in our country.

We’re only there for an hour one day a week and we know that our effort is tiny relative to the huge trauma dished out by the Trump administration. Yet we know from both staff and tourists that our efforts are meaningful. We’ve been there since April and we’ll be there through the end of the cruise ship season.

We’ve stood for staff during many cold and wet days, dressed warmly in our winter gear and raincoats, hats and in May even mittens. It was cold!

But what we have not done, ever, is hidden our faces. Nor have the thousands of Juneauites who have shown up to the many protests that have taken place in our town since President Trump was inaugurated.

With the rapid building of concentration camps throughout our country and the disappearing of undocumented immigrants to bizarre locations like Eswatini in Africa, not to mention notorious prisons in El Salvador, we have reason to fear who the administration will come after next. We have reason to cover our faces so that we can’t be identified for future arrests and deportations. Yet we do not. We are openly exercising our freedom of expression.

The travesty of a budget bill recently passed by Congress includes $29.9 billion in funding for the mass deportation effort, to build concentration camps and hire an additional 10,000 ICE agents. Do we really think they’re going to stop rounding up people once they’ve brutally swept our country of undocumented immigrants?

ICE agents, also known as America’s new secret police force, say they hide their faces because they fear retribution if people know who they are. They’ve got to be kidding. We have a secret police force in our country detaining people in droves and we are not allowed to know who they are? They’re the ones who fear retribution?

I’ve been dabbling in a little history of the Roman Empire lately. The wanton cruelty that existed in Rome and was perpetrated by many of its own emperors (think Caligula) has me connecting the dots. This rounding up of largely brown-skinned immigrants is not about ridding our country of criminals and welfare frauds. If it were, ICE would not be targeting workplaces and detaining people as they are working.

No, the cruelty is the point. This is bloodlust. Even calling a detention facility “Alligator Alcatraz,” where detainees are forced to eat like dogs and sleep on concrete floors, should be unthinkable in our country. Undocumented immigrants are scapegoats to create this opportunity for bloodlust. It’s as if through our fractured and dysfunctional news media we have new Roman coliseums popping up on our screens daily. We are all spectators in this hideous “sport,” hiding behind our screens.

It has been said that President Trump is “playing to his base,” and I assume that some who voted for him share in this bloodlust. I also know many decent and loving people who voted for him who don’t. I appeal to them and to all of us: If we don’t stop this wanton cruelty, if we don’t unmask these secret police terrorizing our communities, the bloodlust will continue and it will be insatiable. It is not acceptable now what our country is doing to undocumented immigrants, human beings every single one. It will never be acceptable.

• Michelle Bonnet Hale’s roots go deep in Juneau and Southeast Alaska. She and her partner share their household with various relatives and three dogs. She served for six years on the Juneau Assembly.