American prisons are great institutions, detaining millions and beefing up regional economies. We’re justly proud of them. As we lost factories to China and Vietnam, we gained prisons, our new industrial system. At this point we hold about 1.8 million people in domestic prisons and jails. That's a lot, but I'm sure you'll agree with Pam Bondi and me that jailing people is desirable for its own sake, no matter what process, if any, leads to that outcome.
However, the American justice and incarceration system has drawbacks. It at least proclaims that, to be imprisoned, one must’ve been convicted of a crime. It waves (ineffectually, I acknowledge) in the direction of giving defendants—even if they're broke or ethnic—some access to a legal defense. The system must produce some reason, however implausible, for which these people are held, and also some recourse if they’re held wrongly or didn’t commit the crime of which they’re accused.
These are bothersome realities to those good-hearted people who want to see millions more people, arranged by ethnic group, incarcerated. That vision would turn out to be difficult to realize, domestically. Even just getting the few million convictions would be a hassle. So we Americans, who love a prison and hate due process, have to develop some alternatives. After all, Marco Rubio loves you, ethnic person; that's why he wants you to suffer. He knows you’ll be more Christ-like after you’re crucified and that you'll thank him later when you see him in hell.
We’re sending hundreds of people to some of the worst prisons in the world. The Trump administration has reached agreements with El Salvador's "cool" dictator Nayib Bukele to take hundreds or thousands of the non-convicted off our hands and hold them in his Terrorism Confinement Center. As a political strategy, he’s converting his nation into a prison colony, and all decent people the world over want to help. Specifically, Trump and Rubio's goal is to avoid all legalities and defy the US judiciary.
It might occur to someone—implausibly—that if we're confining people as terrorists without trial, representation, or recourse, we should start with Bukele and Rubio. Maybe they can be held safely in Rwanda, though we might have to find a holding facility even more obscure: something like Guantanamo, but that no one’s ever heard of, with similar water-boarding facilities. Kidnapping people and torturing them might seem sufficient to justify holding Rubio and Bondi indefinitely, or until they succumb to disease, in a prison that resembles the hold of a slave ship.
But suggesting that Rubio should be legally and physically abused in the brutal manner that he wants to legally and physically abuse others would be wrong, or at least extremely unwise to say aloud. In a truly American ethic, we can agree under pressure, Rubio has the right to harm as many people as severely as he likes on a mere whim, and they have no right to respond in any manner. That’s our form of government.
The idea of offshoring the prison system has a long and distinguished history. And as Rubio has so passionately argued, it’s time to bring back the penal colony in all its glory and with a good conscience, as in the Ottoman empire or the glory that is North Korea. Rubio the penal (note: definitely not penile) colonialist would’ve been of service to either regime. He'd be comfortable, for example, as president/warden of Devil's Island.
For a century, the French government operated Devil's Island off the South American coast of Guiana. They particularly liked to toss political prisoners and Jews such as Alfred Dreyfus in there. Prisoners who can communicate with the outside world are irksome, ridiculous though their pleas for justice or mercy might be.
Penal colonialism is entering its new golden age. For example, the nation of Rwanda seems to be setting up as a prison-state, the better to serve the needs of the US and the UK. I have the feeling that we’ll be sending Latino deportees to El Salvador and black deportees to Rwanda. This is a kindness. People are happier with their own kind.
Mass incarceration has been a problem in the US for decades, and it's been racially oriented. Rwanda and in general the new penal colonialism is the answer we've waited for. Now we'll never again hear from these people (whom we speculate are, or call, gang members), which will be a relief.
Meanwhile, if we pick you up and put you on a plane to a mega-prison in the global south where you’ll be beaten, raped, and starved, you should just say, "Thank you, Mr. President. I'm sorry to be the sort of person whom you speculate for political purposes to be a gang member." As J.D. Vance demands: just say "thank you, Mr. President." Don’t add "you fucking asshole." Whatever you say, however, no one will be able to hear you. But by all means keep mumbling. Or screaming.
You may think that Marco Rubio or Pam Bondi is cruel to the point of psychopathy, that they’re the worst sort of criminals, and that the administration is violating so much of the Constitution that the American people won’t stand for it. But we’ll not only stand for it, we will cheer it on, day by day. If you don’t join us in that, you'll spend the brief rest of your life on Devil's Island.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell
