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America likes to present itself as the homeland of freedoms, the country of human rights and the rule of law. But the scenes that have been repeated since Donald Trump returned to the White House remind, in many ways, the darkest pages of contemporary history.
In the streets, in the courts, in hospitals, in the streets, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), heavily armed, carry out brutal arrests, often in the face, in front of misled citizens who no longer dare to record these images with their phones.
The resulting deportations are no longer limited to returning to the countries of origin: they cross an unprecedented threshold of transfers to third countries without any connection with persons expelled.
Deportations to third countries: an unprecedented and scandalous drift
Historically, the United States expelled persons in an irregular situation to their country of nationality or, failing that, to a recognized country of origin. But in 2025 Washington crossed a new course: bilateral agreements now allow migrants to be sent to States with which they have no ties.
Several African countries have agreed to become the receptacles of this American policy of « third-party deportations ».
Eswatini, Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda or South Sudan have, in discretion, agreements with Washington to accommodate on their soil migrants who are not their nationals.
Behind these arrangements is a mercantile logic: Some financial aid and promises of cooperation are sufficient to transform these States into human dumps, complicit in a policy that violates international law and tramples on the dignity of those expelled.
Worse still, some deportees are sent to bagnes of El Salvador, sadly famous for their inhumane conditions. There, migrants share their cells with local gang members, subjected to daily violence and extreme promiscuity.
More troublingly, some reports indicate that migrants arrested on US soil have been transferred to the US Guantánamo, this infamous place for its arbitrary detentions of « war against terrorism ». Using this enclave as a detention centre for families or individuals who have not committed any crime, other than that of being undocumented, marks an icy drift.
Guantánamo, a global symbol of opacity and the lack of a fair trial, thus becomes an extension of a policy that confuses immigration with security threats, thereby reducing human beings to a status of eternal suspects deprived of all dignity.
NGOs denounce conditions of detention as cruel and degrading treatment, but Washington closes its eyes, preferring to outsource the problem rather than assume it.
The marshes of Alvarar: an exile at the edge of the gulf
In the south of the United States, another mechanism is fuelling controversy: some arrested migrants are parked in improvised detention camps in Alvarar marshes, swampy areas infested with alligators. These places, which are more of a nightmare than a modern detention centre, embody a desire for total dehumanization.
Delivered to moisture, mosquitoes and animal threat, inmates live in constant fear and isolation.
For human rights defenders, these d'alligators marshes are a perfect metaphor for current policy: relegating human beings to the margins of dignity, reducing them to the state of unwanted objects to park away from sight.
Facial arrests: justice without a judge
At the same time, the methods of arrest are getting tougher. Testimonies multiply on spectacular descents, where individuals are raided into the street or court hall, often targeted because of their physical appearance or accent. The fundamental principle of due process — the right to be heard by a judge — is increasingly bypassed.
These practices create widespread fear: victims of domestic violence or crimes renounce filing a complaint for fear of being arrested at the courthouse. Patients are reluctant to go to the hospital, fearing that they may encounter CIA agents in ambush. The implicit message is clear: Some lives, some faces are no longer entitled to the protection of the rule of law.
Disquieting echo in Europe
This drift is not limited to the United States. It finds a devastating echo in Europe, where the extreme straight dream of copying this model. Speeches calling for « raids » and mass expulsions are now based on« American example » to legitimize himself.
If America, a country historically recognized as a democratic model, can do so, why not Europe?
Thus, indignity becomes commonplace, exceptional violence normalizes and a dangerous precedent is built, ready to be imitated by other governments in search of scapegoats.
The American paradox: from the homeland of freedoms to the state of exception
There is something deeply paradoxical, if not tragic, to see the United States. — countries that claim to have liberated Europe from Nazism and to embody freedom — adopt methods that recall the raids of the 1930s and 1940s.
Far from being a mere question of migration policy, it is a question of direct damage to democratic DNA of that country.
By violating the principles which they themselves have contributed to enshrine in international law — protection of refugees, prohibition of refoulement, right to a fair trial —The United States denies the universality of human dignity.
Human Consequences: Family Fracture and Perpetual Exile
Beyond the great principles, they are lives that change. Fathers disappear overnight, without warning their loved ones.
Children learn by phone that their mother has been deported... sometimes to a country she has never heard of.
Young people grow up with permanent fear that their parents will be arrested at school or church.
This deaf violence breaks paths, feeds a collective trauma and destroys the bond of trust between the state and immigrant communities.
Humanity at the crossroads
This is not about denying the right of a sovereign State to control its borders or to enforce its migration laws. But this right must be exercised with respect for humanity and justice.
Deporting individuals to unrelated third countries, sending them to the bagnes of El Salvador, parking them in the infested swamps of alligators, entering into financial deals with complacent governments: these are practices that go beyond simple migration management and constitute a moral regression.
Trump's America 2 thus places humanity in the face of a crucial question: will we accept that democracies become permanent states of exception?
Or will we defend, at all costs, the idea that human dignity is not negotiable?
The current policy of the United States with regard to raids and deportations to third countries is more than a migration crisis: it is a mirror of our time, where fear and exclusion weigh heavier than dignity and justice.
Agreements with certain African countries such as Rwanda, Sudan or Ghana, transfers to the rural areas of El Salvador and detentions in the marshes of Alvarar show how far cynicism can go when it is dressed in the clothes of realpolitik.
History will judge these compromises severely. And it is today that we must remember with force: no frontier, no deal, no ideology can justify destroying the part of humanity that connects us all.
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Imaginary Testimonial of a Little Boy: When Exile Tears a Family
My name is Mario. I'm eight.
My dad, Gilberto, often told me about his past. He said he left his village in Colombia twenty years ago. There, the narco-traffickers had massacred her parents and my aunt, her little sister. He had fled, alone, with only fear and hope in his pockets.
Arriving in the United States, he had worked tirelessly, accepting the hardest jobs, those that the Americans did not want. He was sweeping the streets, wearing bricks, washing oily kitchens until the middle of the night.
But gradually, he was rebuilt. Here, he met Mom from Puerto Rico. They were married, and together they had built a family. Four children, including me, born on this earth.
Sometimes, in the evening, he told us his story with tears in his eyes and nostalgia that shook our hearts. He said he had lost everything once, but that with us he had found a reason to live.
Dad worked as a cook in a small restaurant on the outskirts of town. His hands always smelled spices and smoke from the stoves. He came home late in the evening, tired, but he had set his schedules for something he never missed: come and pick me up when he left school. It was his date with me, his moment of pride.
Despite his 20 years in the United States, despite all the courage and sweat left in these kitchens, he never managed to obtain a residence permit. It was his secret wound, that invisible weight that accompanied him every day, but that he was trying to hide behind his smile when he held my hand.
On that day, the sun was shining on the school yard. I had seen Dad in the distance, he was smiling, his open arms were waiting for me. I was about to run to him, when black men like shadows fell from heaven in a black car like a battle chariot.
They had masks, weapons that shone stronger than the sun. They threw themselves at him as if he were a criminal. I shook his hand with all my strength, but cold hands snatched from him. So Dad just had time to tell me with a trembling voice:
— Courage, my son.
And then nothing.
Her smile went off. His body disappeared in the back of the black car. And I stayed alone, tears falling on the sidewalk like too heavy stones.
I was screaming, crying so much that I couldn't breathe. The director's running, she took me in her arms. She called Mom, who came to get me in tears. Since that day, Dad never came home.
It's been days. We have no news. Dad's been working here for over 20 years. He didn't have any papers, but he kept us alive. Without him, the house is empty, the table is almost without food. Mom's trying to stay strong, but I hear her crying at night in her room.
With my brothers and sisters, we don't understand. We're all born here, we're Americans. But what's the point if our dad could disappear like this in front of my school without a judge saying anything?
Since then, my nights have been black. I'm not sleeping anymore. Every time I close my eyes, nightmares come back: I still see these men in black taking Dad over and over. I wake up screaming, heart beating so hard that it prevents me from breathing. Sleep became a trap, a prison where Dad's absence chases me.
At school, I'm not the same. I'm staying in my corner, not to mention drowned eyes. Torrents of tears flow on my cheeks like a waterfall that never stops. My director, worried, brought in a psychologist. Every morning, he makes me sit in a small room. But I don't know what to say. I stand still, my eyes in the void, trembling, and my tears burn my cheeks without me being able to hold them.
They say that my attitude was disturbing the class. That my sobs scare other children. So one day, we decided I wouldn't come. The school stayed behind me.
Now I'm staying home. I pray all the time for Dad to come back. I cry with Mom, I cry with my brothers and sisters. It's like we're in mourning, except we haven't been given back his body, except we don't know if he's still breathing. The house resonates with our sobs, like a church where one sings sadness.
One day, an association that helps families like ours taught us the truth. Dad's not in the United States anymore. He was locked up in a prison in El Salvador, a country he had never known. There, we treat him like a waste that was thrown away from us.
I can't imagine his face behind bars, away from us, without knowing if he's still safe.
I just want Dad to come home. Let him walk through the door as before, which he calls me by my first name, which he kisses. Let him erase the fear of my nights and the tears of my days. That we can all eat together at the table, as before, that black men disappear from our streets.
I'm a kid, but I already know that we can break a child by taking his father away. And when I watch Mom cry, I understand that our pain is a gulf where we all fall together.
So I scream, even if no one hears me: Give us back our dad. Give us back our lives.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/prince-georges-county/video-officer-gun-ice-arrest/3993797/
