My family and I went horseback riding in some Arizona mountains a couple of months back. When we were on the trail, our guide made sure to tell us not to let the horses eat these little shrubs they like eating, because doing so will make them sick.
And because of the way my mind works, I’ve thought about that a lot these days as I’ve witnessed the Trump administration and its Republican allies attempt to run roughshod over civil rights and democracy itself.
The excesses of illiberalism seem to be causing sore spots for the GOP as it bends to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Take, for example, the recent instances of far-right lawmakers from both the House and the Senate decrying plans to repurpose certain facilities in their states to lock up people swept up in Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown.
But now that the plan is being put into effect, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker are up in arms — apparently not out of concern for the humanity of those incarcerated, but because of the effect the detention centers could have on surrounding communities.
Gosar sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday, raising concerns about the Trump administration’s plan to convert a warehouse in Surprise, Arizona, into a 1,500-bed facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Concerns regarding infrastructure capacity, traffic, emergency services, environmental impacts, and public safety deserve serious consideration,” he wrote. “These are not anti-illegal immigration concerns; they are common-sense expectations of transparency, planning, and accountability.”
Gosar may have been spurred to action by large demonstrations — in his own red district — against the project. But it’s noteworthy that even the Trump administration’s statement defending the project kind of makes it seem like he didn’t know what he was in for when he bought into the whole “mass deportation” thing.
“It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine what else Gosar expected when he was calling for “mass deportations and NO AMNESTY.”
Wicker is basically in the same boat, having sent his own letter to Noem this week opposing the Trump administration’s plans to convert a warehouse in northern Mississippi into a facility to potentially hold more than 8,500 people.
“Converting this industrial asset into an ICE detention center forecloses economic growth opportunities and replaces them with a use that does not generate comparable economic returns or community benefits,” he wrote.
Wicker also said such facilities “impose substantial and specialized infrastructure demands — including transportation access, water, sewer and energy costs, staffing, medical care, and emergency services.”
It’s not so much that he’s wrong. But coming from someone who supported a presidential campaign that was heavily focused on mass deportations — and someone who touted Trump’s immigration stances during that same campaign — it’s difficult to read this and other such complaints from Republicans as anything but them suffering the effects of their party’s maniacal quest for power.
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