DISPUTING KEATS

The great English poet John Keats wrote in his magnificent 1819 poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all Ye know on earth, and all Ye need to know.” 

Were that it were so!  But poetry cannot hide the fact that the truth is sometimes ugly.  Consider two current cases.

First, the war in Gaza and the destruction and famine it has wrought. 

Policy makers, scholars, and pundits can argue whether what is happening in Gaza (and to some extent, in the West Bank) is genocide, whether the leveling of Gaza and the systematic killing of its people is equivalent to the Holocaust, or whether Palestinians have the right to free themselves by any means necessary from an open-air prison.  They can debate whether Israel has become an apartheid, undemocratic state, or whether the only way to achieve security in Israel is to ring-fence or destroy Hamas. And they can construct theories about who has the “right” to live in historic Palestine, effectively pitting the Old Testament against the 1948 U.N. Partition.

I find arguing semantics and questionable—if not flat-out false—equivalencies paralyzing and unhelpful.  Moreover, they obfuscate the truth, one that is in this case quite ugly.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has an historical and religious, as well as a current international political, context.  Policy makers, scholars, and pundits can debate who is ultimately responsible for the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, but the fact remains that Hamas hides in/under schools, hospitals, and residential buildings; and Hamas uses civilians as human shields. 

That means that, despite any justifications on the part of either side to the conflict, any military action in Gaza, given such physical and tactical conditions, simply cannot be waged without killing thousands of innocent non-combatants.  And that in turn means that any such military action will inevitably violate established rules of war and lead to accusations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, unlawful resettlement, and even genocide. 

Doesn't all of that tell us that such a war cannot and should not be waged, and that instead of waging war, a negotiated resolution (the typical endpoint of all wars, anyway) of Hamas’ attack on Israel of October 7 and what led to it should have been pursued from the very beginning?  Shouldn’t we face the truth--the facts on the ground--and find a better way? 

I just finished a book by Gitta Sereny called Into That Darkness, a compilation of interviews with Franz Stangl (below), the Commandant of Treblinka (one of four death camps in Poland), and those who knew him or were his victims.  It is a sickening but edifying book.  Sereny's aim in writing the book--and this is an exhaustively researched and heroic effort to look for truth without prejudice--is this: 

[The book] is not intended to be an account of horror, although horror is unavoidable.  Nor is it only an attempt to understand one man, who was uniquely implicated in the greatest tragedy of our time.  It aims to be a demonstration of the fatal interdependence of all human actions, and an affirmation of man's responsibility for his own acts and their consequences. 

In other words, life is complicated and there are always extenuating circumstances, but in the final analysis, each of us must step back from and out of our immediate historical and personal context and do what we know is right and not do what we know is wrong.

The second case is the United States’ policy on immigration.

As with the war in Gaza, policy makers, pundits, and scholars can debate why it is that, after decades of deportations by both Republican and Democratic administrations from Reagan through Trump II, the number of illegal immigrants residing in the United States has remained stubbornly stable at around 11 million (now up to 13 million between 2022 and 2024)--see The Conversation.  Clearly, this is a failed system.  The question is and has been what to do about it.

Policy makers, pundits, and scholars can argue whether illegal immigration takes jobs away from Americans or whether farm workers, meat packers, hotel maids, nursing home caregivers, and restaurant dishwashers are doing jobs that Americans will not do because they are dangerous, difficult, and/or do not pay enough. They can debate whether illegal immigration is a crisis at all, or whether it is a politically-motivated, manufactured issue used to drive votes to one party or the other.  They can produce white papers on whether the benefits accruing to illegal immigrants and asylum seekers unfairly burden the American taxpayer, or whether those employed (even if illegally) contribute enough in taxes so as to be a net positive to the economy.  And they can argue whether illegal immigrants commit more crimes than those native-born, or not. 

But, as with the subject of Gaza, these debates are paralyzing and unproductive.  Moreover, they obfuscate the truth, one that is in this case also quite ugly.

The truth is that it is not possible to deport 13 million people illegally residing in the US without first detaining them for many years in detention camps until their deportation or asylum cases can be heard and appealed in legal proceedings. That is to say, mass deportation under any kind of expeditious timetable is incompatible with the rights illegal immigrants and asylum seekers are entitled to as “persons” under the 5^th and 14^th Amendments to the US Constitution. 

Recently, President Trump said (unfortunately, I cannot find the reference) that adhering to due process requirements in the mass deportation of 13 million undocumented immigrants would “take too long and be too expensive.”  He may be right.  Let’s look at the numbers.

 

During 2013, President Obama deported a record number of 400,000 immigrants, earning him the title of “Deporter in Chief.”  At that rate, with arrests, detentions, hearings, and final removal orders, it would take 32.5 years to deport 13 million illegal immigrants.  

While it’s unclear what “too long and too expensive” mean to President Trump, H.R.1, otherwise known as the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), tells the story. Within the dollars allocated to immigration, the clear emphasis is on arrest and detention; due process is a very, very low priority.      

As reported by the American Immigration Council (a detailed and illuminating report I highly recommend), of the $170.7 billion allocated to immigration policy under the OBBB, only $3.3 billion is allocated to (emphasis added in bold):  “prosecutions of noncitizens, compensating local governments for incarcerating noncitizens, combatting drug trafficking, and immigration judges.”  That’s 2% of the total with no guidance as to the allocation to prosecutions and immigration judges within the $3.3 billion allocation.  Tellingly, the OBBB provides about $65 billion for CBP border protection, $45 billion for expanded detention facilities, and $30 billion for ICE enforcement and removal—84% of the total. 

 

How the $3.3 billion for immigration court proceedings is spent is up to the Executive Branch; specifically, the Executive Office for Immigration Review.  As the Council report notes (emphasis added in bold):

Because these funds are provided through reconciliation—and not the regular appropriations process—they do not include directives about how the funds must be used, which prevents members of Congress from conducting meaningful oversight. Importantly, these funds all need to be spent by September 30, 2029 but the agencies receiving them have significant discretion as to how to allocate them across the next 51 months. 

H.R. 1 includes funding for the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)—which oversees the country’s immigration court system—as an allowable expense under a lump sum of $3.3 billion to the Department of Justice (DOJ). It also limits the number of immigration judges to 800 starting on November 1, 2028. Given this limitation and that EOIR currently has about 700 immigration judges, only a portion of [the] total is likely to be allocated to EOIR. 

By providing only a relatively small additional sum to the immigration courts while significantly increasing funding for immigration arrests and detention, H.R. 1 will dramatically increase already high immigration court case backlogs particularly for people held in detention facilities. The bill’s cap on the number of immigration judges at 800 will severely restrict progress on backlog reduction. Immigrants held in detention could be forced to wait months between every hearing while immigrants proceeding in their cases outside of detention would face even longer wait times as judges were reassigned to detained dockets. 

It is quite clear, then, that the emphasis of US immigration policy falls squarely on arrest, detention, and removal, and not on due process.  Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the OBBB provides $38 billion for new detention centers, an increase of 308% over the 2024 budget. 

It is also worth noting that the mass deportation of 13 million illegal immigrants is expected (wished?) to be accomplished within 51 months.  Meeting that goal would require 3.7 million removals per year!  With a maximum of 800 immigration judges hearing removal cases, that simply isn’t possible without trampling on the constitutional rights of deportees.

So, what is the likely scenario?  If I were to guess, I would say that illegal immigrants arrested by CBP or ICE face years of warehousing in detention centers, possibly being “loaned out” to employers as “essential workers” at a profit by the federal government, presumably to keep the economy humming, consumer prices low, and opponents of immigration pacified.

Another possibility, even less desirable, is that the President will make good on his signature campaign promise by putting people illegally in the country on midnight flights to El Salvador or Sudan, in violation of habeas corpus requirements and court orders forbidding those flights. 

Isn’t there a better way?  Of course there is.  But the truth is that America has created an ugly mess and the current legislative solution to that mess is even uglier.  As with Gaza, we need to step back from the complications and the history and the recriminations, accept that we created this mess, and do what makes sense—economically, legally, and morally-- to fix it.  Condemning people who entered illegally, however wrong those border crossings were, and they were wrong, to what amounts to concentration camps cannot and should not be the answer.

With apologies to John Keats, the truth may not always be beautiful, but it is always powerful.  Accepting the truth with grace and humility is an affirmation of man’s responsibility for his own actions and their consequences.  That should be the goal and the result in both Gaza and in Washington, D.C.

Keep it real!

Marilyn