Author’s note: Each edition of The Epstein Files will contain at least one mention of Trump – a not-so-subtle reminder that, yes, Trump is in The Epstein Files.
Since Gen. William Jackson Palmer and his wealthy white buddies stood on the prairies overlooking Pikes Peak, “discovering” a place that was already inhabited by Utes and visited by many other indigenous tribes, this region has gone through one re-invention after another.
Palmer envisioned a refined resort town, an oasis of culture in a rugged land of cowboys and Indians.
The decades that followed brought tourists, gold barons, tuberculosis patients, artists, college students, soldiers and airmen, olympians, evangelicals and other folks looking for city culture and mountain fun.
I found it a place of rugged beauty and endless wells of kindness.
What’s next?
Ooh, I have an idea. How about a place of oppression, misery and imprisonment? I envision ICE detention centers. I can imagine weekly kidnapping by ICE agents in our neighborhoods, construction sites, and shopping centers.
That’s what President Trump promised, remember? We’d have so much winning we’d get tired of all the winning.
Well, congratulations! MAGA won, and that victory is finally leaving the spoils at our doorstep.
We’re seeing those spoils in more economic challenges, less civility, more overt bigotry, less diversity.
Trump’s America’s most dramatic arrival came in April’s raid on a Latin nightclub, part of Trump’s reign of terror. It was designed to keep immigrants shaking in their work boots.
Springs Mayor Mobolade, who claims to be pro-immigration and pro-immigrants, cheered as the feds swooped in.
Now we’re facing the prospect of two Pikes Peak region ICE detention facilities that some are calling “Alpine Alcatraz.” Clever, right?
In ordinary times, opening a detention center would take all kinds of city approvals and permits. But ordinary times, these are not. Just like so many of the contract law enforcement companies ICE has deployed, the detention centers probably would be run by a private company.
We’re privatizing and incentivizing police raids and imprisonment. It’s big money, and no doubt it’ll bring high paying jobs, along with more misery and brutality.
Remember that Big Ugly Bill that passed a few months ago? It’s generously funding new immigration sweeps and detention centers, in Colorado and elsewhere.
We’re expecting these new cage complexes to be along the same lines as the one in the Florida Everglades, where detainees describe “torturous conditions in cage-like units,” with lights on at all times, lack of food and medical treatment, and unsanitary conditions.
Is this who we want to be? Is this what the Make America Great Again folks voted for?
Some of my friends shrug off “what happens in Washington.” But it’s all coming to the Pikes Peak region.
In July, Black Forest turned into the Wild West, as federal agents did some target practice on the truck of some suspects who maybe run a Mexican drug cartel or might have just had some drugs in their apartment.
We may never know. Just like we may never learn what happened to all those people swept up in April’s raid. And now they’re raiding our Mexican food markets, the lowest hanging fruit, so to speak. (Good thing racial profiling got the green light from the Supreme Court.)
As The Bulletin reported, ICE agents (some in masks) recently smashed the window of a car on Platte Avenue, abducting the adults and leaving a child screaming in the back seat. [See “ICE breaks car window with child inside to catch ‘dangerous Guatemalan’” from Aug. 22].
Expect more of that kind of thing. I wonder about the level of empathy impairment it takes to abandon a screaming child in the back of the car.
The inhumanity.
But on some level, we have a choice here. Is this who we want to be? Do we want to continue to elect leaders who will shrug or even cheer on this kind of cruelty?
Roundups, raids, prison camps, random abductions. Is this how you envisioned the next phase for the Pikes Peak region? Or do we have the courage to say no to this inhumanity, to recognize that kindness, empathy and diversity are as important to us as our famous mountains.
Do we?
This Epstein is chairman of The Bulletin’s board of directors and does not accept a fee for his writings here. His views are his alone and do not reflect the official stance of the Bulletin.
