Would you happily turn in your immigrant neighbor for $1,000?
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Fort Leonard Wood”
Dear Senators Schmitt & Hawley,
Thank you for representing your all your constituents and Missouri residents along with the US citizens who voted you into your office. As a uniformed service member, I also took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the Untied States. As a health care provider, I took an oath to seek to do no harm to my patients and clients. And as a Missouri resident and U.S. citizen, I am concerned about the trajectory of our nation.
Stationing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Fort Leonard Wood within the State of Missouri, Bill MO SB72, and Bill MO SB58 threaten the Constitution of the United States and the wellbeing of all Missourians. Allowing the Executive Branch to raise a domestic army that increasingly answers only to the Chief Executive usurps the power of Congress to raise a standing army and declare war (Section 8 ). These things may also threaten the right to a fair trial (Habeus Corpus) and Amendments 3-10 by normalizing these behaviors with non-citizens.
It is not healthy for people to stereotype their neighbors based upon their ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or spoken language. It is not healthy to sell others out for a $1,000 bounty or government-funded jobs and contracts. And it is not healthy to increase Missouri’s dependence on federal funds.
These United States are increasingly dependent on federal funds (i.e. taxpayer dollars) delegated by fewer individuals while they suffer a continued decline in entrepreneurship and community/civic engagement. Top-down financial capital provided by U.S. citizens but delegated by an atrophying system of representation is not the answer to our problems.
Neither is scapegoating and imprisoning people who crossed the border without permission or overstayed their visas. We the people of these United States are also accountable for those failures. We can construct a secure border and humane immigration system that relies on cooperation with our competent local law enforcement rather than locally stationed federal forces increasingly unchecked by our local, State, and Federal (i.e. Legislature & Judiciary) governments. The people of Missouri need to be more curious about their local town halls, community centers, small businesses, schools, and churches not the immigration status of their neighbors.
Please consider that by supporting these contracts and bills you may be aiding the development of forced-labor camps (i.e. CoreCivic, GEO Group) while delegitimizing our people, our nation, and our Constitution. I adamantly oppose SB58, SB72, and ICE at Fort Leonard Wood, not because I distrust the civil servants that work for ICE (i.e. my former colleagues) but because I cannot support the potential for bounty hunting and enslavement in my home state.
I am appealing to your civility and legal education. Please educated me as to how ICE at Fort Leonard Wood, MO SB58, and MO SB72 will go down in history as triumphs not tragedies, and I will be happy to change my mind. But if you tell me that these bills – bills that would reward citizens for ratting out their neighbors and allow for potential life-time imprisonment and forced-labor based solely on illegal crossings and failure to pay fines – are not dangerous to the wellbeing of my state and my nation, I will be unlikely to believe you. We citizens of the United States are not so foolish or stupid when we are provided the necessary information in absence of jargon and legalese. As a man privileged with a deep understanding of law and government, you are well-positioned to educated us if you do so honestly and without pretense or realpolitik.
Most of us fail to see the trajectory of these bills, policies, and for-profit prisons because we are so disconnected from the people who design, support, and benefit from them. However, we U.S. taxpayers, some of whom are not U.S. citizens, are funding the Federal contracts for these for-profit prison systems and the forced-labor and internment of those justly or perhaps somewhat unjustly arraigned in these systems. Past evidence suggests that we release some people who should remain in prison and imprison some people who should remain free. Our focus should be on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our justice system not saturating it with demographics that can be more easily arrested.
I am requesting that you represent me and the majority of Missourians by opposing SB58 (now combined with SB94), SB72, and ICE at Fort Leonard Wood.
Thank you,
Dear Missouri Residents and U.S. Citizens,
Feel free to copy, paste, and send this to Senators Schmitt, Hawley, and your Federal and State Representatives. And please comment with any local community resources that can help us build trust and civic engagement within our local communities across our community centers, town halls, small business, schools, churches, and other places of worship. Thanks for reading and seeking to make your hometown, city, county, and state a better place.
Deliberating Truth 