Lawmakers in Florida are raising alarm over documents suggesting immigrant children and pregnant women could be detained at ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’
A draft operational plan obtained by the Miami Herald suggests minors could indeed be transported to the controversial site in the Everglades. The 35-page undated document details protocols to “separate minors from unrelated adults” and to provide “snacks and water” to minors, pregnant women and detainees with medical conditions during transport.
“The State of Florida is planning to send pregnant women and children to the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention camp,” wrote State Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith on social media. “This is totally un-American. We cannot be silent.”
But we’re talking about a situation in which the protections are against unjust persecution. Selective lack of protections in this case is quite literally the same as selective persecution.
No, they are not the same thing. Just like not prosecuting children is not the same as selectively prosecuting adults.
It is also fine to prosecute pregnant women. We just don’t send them to conditions that put them and their baby at risk. It’s protection from severe risk, not protection from consequences or prosecution.
Alligator Auschwitz is an abomination and nobody should be held there. However, there are degrees of inhumane. Sending pregnant women there is more inhumane than sending an able bodied man.