Concentration camps are often compared to prisons, but that comparison is inaccurate. In the United States, inmates arrive in penitentiaries only after they have been convicted of serious crimes, under processes constrained by the US Constitution.

Starting with probable cause (which brown skin is not); then arrest (you have the right to remain silent); followed by voluntary pleading (coerced confessions are thrown out); leading to formal trial (bench or jury, defendants’ choice), based only on admissible evidence (hearsay/unsupported opinions not admissible), constitutional constraints apply at every juncture. If they falter, appellate courts are watching.

While innocent people have been wrongly convicted since our penal system was created in the late 1700s, wrongful convictions were not produced by system design. Before Donald Trump, wrongful, sloppy, or vengeance-driven criminal convictions of the innocent were the product of flawed men, not a flawed system.

People in concentration camps reflect an illegal system. The crucial distinction between prison and concentration camps is that concentration camp detainment is independent of judicial review. Inmates have not been convicted of any crime. Concentration camps are most often used for political reasons, or to incarcerate people whom the governing regime sees as a threat.

Sinful celebration of cruelty

Rounded up under maniacal whims, concentration camp inmates don’t represent the rule of law — they represent an autocrat’s lust for power. This week, Trump, accompanied by grinning ghouls Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis, toured their newest and cruelest toy, “Alligator Alcatraz,” where they laughed in anticipation of cruelty.

Because the people headed there have not been convicted of any crime, the facility is a concentration camp. It consists of metal cages surrounded by tents, in the heat of the Florida Everglades, where temperatures have reached 107F. The only way to escape is by wading through alligator- and python-infested swamps.

This level of cruelty by design is new to America, even as Fox News celebrates it and Trump laughs about it. Father Federico Capdepón, a retired priest from the Miami Archdiocese who is monitoring the situation, describes both the camp and the inhumanity it reflects as, quite simply, “sinful.” The six Catholic justices who paved the way for Trump’s cruelty must know their complicity is an assault on the teachings of Christ.

Supreme Court paved the way

Contrary to Trump’s misinformation spread by Fox News, multiple studies show that immigrants, documented or not, account for disproportionately low crime. The most recent data show that only 3% of people who are jailed are non-US citizens, even though that group comprises over 14% of the population.

Supreme Court justices are aware of these statistics, just as they are cognizant of the sinister methods Trump has cooked up to dismantle the Constitution. At least 192 judicial rulings have blocked or paused Trump’s initiatives, while the Supreme Court has conducted multiple reviews of Trump’s Executive Orders. And yet, on June 27, the court outlawed nationwide injunctive relief, the main tool to protect people from Trump’s lawless cruelty.

Three days later, Trump celebrated the opening of “Alligator Alcatraz,” with the promise of more.

Federal judges disarmed

Judges of all stripes have argued both for and against nationwide injunctive relief; the merits of those arguments are worthy of careful review. Who can forget rightwing Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issuing an injunction during the Biden administration to try to outlaw the contraceptive mifepristone?

SCOTUS dismissed the mifepristone case because anti-abortion doctors did not have standing, but left the tool Kacsmaryk used, the nationwide injunction, undisturbed. The Republican majority could have blocked nationwide injunctions then—in response to a federal judge so clearly trying to write new law— but did not. The Court also allowed a nationwide injunction against Biden’s student loan forgiveness, then struck the loan forgiveness on the merits without addressing injunctive relief.

Choosing to end nationwide injunctions now, despite Trump’s cruel, dangerous, and despotic agenda, while they allowed nationwide injunctions under Biden, leaves an inescapable partisan stench.

It also imparts the stench of immorality. Republicans on the high court have empowered a rogue president of dubious sanity after his DOJ disobeyed federal court orders, including their own; after he sent military troops to LA to intimidate

peaceful protestors; after he punished law firms for protected political speech; after he attacked American universities; and after they watched Trump tighten his unconstitutional grip on the press. They disarmed federal judges after giving Trump near-carte blanche immunity to break criminal laws.

How will the Court defend Trump’s alligator cruelty?

The Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, does not just apply to US citizens. It applies to everyone within the U.S., regardless of immigration status, which means an 8th-A case from the Florida Everglades will eventually reach SCOTUS. One dreads the verbal gymnastics the majority will employ to defend cooking migrants alive, or feeding them to alligators, as something other than cruel and unusual.

On July 1, 2024, the same Republican supermajority ended the foundational premise of our nation: that no one is above the law. I imagined then that the rule of law had run its course in the US. If Trump is above the law, there is no limit to what he will do to stay in power, and there is no shortage of lackeys who will enable him. Apprehending and detaining political enemies could soon become Trump’s “national security” agenda. No doubt, Trump’s trillion-dollar military budget will come in handy.

In the meantime, maybe each new “Alligator Alcatraz” can be named for the high-court Catholics who paved its way. Perhaps the cruelest sites, ICE henchmen feeding body parts to pythons for fun, can be reserved for Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

What will become of this country because SCOTUS immunized a criminal president, then disarmed federal judges, remains to be seen. But what the court has done to defend and enable Trump’s cruelty is un-American, unprecedented, and vile.

• Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.