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THE MONSTERS ARE REBUILDING A WORLD WHERE DARK-SKINNED HUMANS DON’T
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Thom Hartmann
August 13, 2026
Hartmann Report
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_ Once government can place one group beyond the protection of law,
the boundary can always expand to the rest of us… _

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_“People are disappearing into this no man’s land. They have no
connection to their new country, and they also apparently have no
legal rights.” —Immigration rights attorney Alma David, __quoted_
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in The New York Times_

_“Terrible things are happening outside... poor helpless people are
being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women
and children are separated. Children come home from school to find
that their parents have disappeared.” — Anne Frank diary entry
January 13, 1943_

Authoritarianism doesn’t just begin when a government embraces
brutality. It steps in on cats’ feet when brutality becomes
politically useful, legally routinized, and morally acceptable because
a government has first declared its victims undeserving of our
empathy. When average people in the bureaucracy just “do their
jobs” inflicting horrors on other humans simply because they’ve
been declared “the other.”

OUTSIDE OF MILITARY COUPS LIKE PINOCHET’S CHILE, COUNTRIES DON’T
GENERALLY SLIDE FROM REPUBLICAN DEMOCRACIES INTO TOTALITARIANISM AND
FASCISM IN A SINGLE STEP. THERE’S A PROCESS, AND IT ALWAYS BEGINS BY
THE GOVERNMENT DECIDING THAT SOME PEOPLE SIMPLY DON’T DESERVE THE
BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS THAT HAVE BEEN FOUNDATIONAL TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION
FOR CENTURIES.

The Trump regime’s treatment of Roberto Mosquera, profiled at length
in yesterday’s _New York Times _
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Nicholas Casey
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shows just how far down this terrible road we’ve already traveled.

MOSQUERA HAS BEEN HELD FOR A YEAR WITHOUT TRIAL OR LEGAL DUE PROCESS
IN A MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON IN THE TINY LANDLOCK SOUTHERN AFRICAN
COUNTRY MOST PEOPLE HAVE NEVER HEARD OF, ESWATINI, ONE OF THE
WORLD’S FEW REMAINING PURE KINGDOMS THAT WAS FORMERLY KNOWN AS
SWAZILAND. THE 59-YEAR-OLD FATHER OF FOUR IS SLOWLY GOING BLIND FROM
UNTREATED GLAUCOMA, AND APPARENTLY WILL BE HELD THERE FOR THE REST OF
HIS LIFE.

He first came to America at the age of 12 as part of the 1980 Mariel
boatlift from Cuba, fell in with a local Hispanic gang and ended up
being accused of shooting a member of a different gang in the leg (he
insists he didn’t do it and wasn’t there at the time). He served
his time in an American prison and, when he got out, reinvented his
life.

He became a born-again Christian, got married and had four American
citizen daughters, and became a plumber, rising through the ranks to
foreman. The _Times_ quoted
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his former boss as saying he’d turned his life around and:

“He wasn’t just a hard worker; he inspired the guys around him,”
he said.

HE WAS ALSO IN THE UNITED STATES LEGALLY (IN PART BECAUSE CUBA ISN’T
ACCEPTING DEPORTEES), AND CHECKED IN WITH THE FEDS EVERY YEAR TO RENEW
HIS WORK PERMIT. THE LAST TIME HE SHOWED UP, HOWEVER, HE WAS TOLD HIS
PERMIT WAS BEING WITHDRAWN AND HE WAS SEIZED AND TAKEN THROUGH A
SERIES OF BRUTAL DETENTION FACILITIES AND EVENTUALLY PUT ON A PLANE TO
AFRICA, A CONTINENT HE’D NEVER VISITED. AS THE _TIMES_ NOTES
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“That was more than a year ago. Mosquera still sits in that same
maximum-security prison with nowhere to go. No charges against him. No
way to appeal his predicament. No sign that he will ever be freed.
Cuba has not signaled any willingness to take him, and Mosquera says
he has no desire to go there. Eswatini will not release him from
prison, even though he served his time in the United States and
committed no crime in Africa.”

In other words, we’re watching the creation of human beings who can
be pushed outside the normal protections of law, geography, community,
and ultimately even public attention. Roberto has been
“disappeared” by Trump and Miller and is now in prison for what
may be the rest of his life, and this all happened without his ever
having stood before a judge or jury.

OUR DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND CONSTITUTION WERE GROUNDED IN THE
IDEA THAT ALL HUMANS ARE BORN WITH HUMAN _RIGHTS_, EVEN THOUGH IT TOOK
THIS NATION CENTURIES TO GET SERIOUSLY CLOSE TO LIVING BY ITS OWN
CREED.

Instead of referring to “citizens,” the Constitution repeatedly
mentions “persons,” a word that encompasses _all_ humans.
Consider, for example, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, part of the
Bill of Rights:

4th Amendment: “The RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but
upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or
things to be seized.”

5th Amendment: “NO PERSON shall be held to answer for a capital, or
otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a
Grand Jury…; NOR SHALL ANY PERSON be subject for the same offence to
be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in
any criminal case to be a witness against himself, NOR BE DEPRIVED OF
LIFE, LIBERTY, OR PROPERTY, WITHOUT DUE PROCESS OF LAW; nor shall
private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation.” (emphasis added)

These, in part, constitute what’s called _due process_, which is
repeated in the Fourteenth Amendment’s first section “…_nor
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws_.”

Most of the tens of thousands of people ICE is now holding in its
custody or have been deported are there _without_ ever having stood
before an actual Article 3 judge. Their rights are being ignored.

THE PROCESS THE TRUMP REGIME IS NOW PURSUING IS TO OBLITERATE WHAT
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR HANNAH ARENDT CALLED, “THE RIGHT TO HAVE
RIGHTS.” IN CHAPTER 9 (“_THE DECLINE OF THE NATION-STATE AND THE
END OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN_”) OF HER BOOK _THE ORIGINS OF
TOTALITARIANISM_
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SHE ELABORATED ON WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE BUTCHERS, BAKERS, AND SHOP
KEEPERS GOT JOBS IN THE NAZI DETENTION CAMPS:

“The conception of human rights based upon the assumed existence of
a human being as such broke down at the very moment when those who
professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with
people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific
relationships—except that they were still human. The world found
nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.”

She realized that the gravest crisis of human rights is grounded in a
government arguing, in its behavior, that some humans aren’t fully
human and therefore aren’t entitled to basic human rights. A
stateless person herself for 18 years, this idea of governments
denying the basic humanity of less-favored groups was at the core of
much of her writing.

WITH ROBERTO MOSQUERA AND THE THOUSANDS OF OTHERS TRUMP AND MILLER ARE
PAYING MILLIONS OF OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS TO FOREIGN PRISONS TO HOLD
UNTIL THEY DIE, WE’RE WATCHING PLAY OUT HERE IN AMERICA THAT VERY
TRANSITION FROM A DECENT, RIGHTS-RESPECTING GOVERNMENT INTO A ROGUE
AND LAWLESS REGIME.

We’ve danced with this before, of course. The entire history of the
institution of slavery was grounded in the proclamation of the
southern states that Black people weren’t fully human. More
recently, George W. Bush humiliated America on the world stage by
sanctioning torture and murder in Abu Ghraib and other foreign prisons
and black sites, along with its assertion that Gitmo was beyond the
reach of American human rights law or the US Constitution.

BUT THIS IS A MODERN, WHOLE-OF-GOVERNMENT APPROACH TO DEHUMANIZING
NONWHITE PEOPLE IN THE NAME OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT, WITH A
HUNDRED-BILLION-DOLLAR BUDGET. AND NOW ICE IS BUYING ELECTRIC SHOCK
GLOVES FOR THEMSELVES, TO RATCHET UP THE BRUTALITY.

Republicans in Congress funded, and the Trump regime has built, a
massive machine to Make America White Again, considerations of
“woke” concepts like rights be damned. And it’s growing and
becoming more hostile to average Americans and their concerns by the
day.

Nobody in a democratic republic should have the power to make people
disappear. It’s antithetical to the very idea of our form of
government.

WHEN THIS REGIME HAS BEEN RELEGATED TO THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY, WE’LL
HAVE A HELL OF A BIG JOB REESTABLISHING THIS COUNTRY’S ONCE-VAUNTED
EMBRACE OF HUMAN RIGHTS. THERE WILL HAVE TO BE EITHER FULL-ON TRIALS
OR SOMETHING LIKE THE SOUTH AFRICAN TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION
COMMISSION
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We should be doing the planning now.

_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author of 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

* Immigrants
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* Racism
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* mass deportation
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