Memorial Day in the Age of Disappearance
On a day meant to honor those who died fighting tyranny, we confront a horrifying truth: our government may be trading human lives for weapons deals and political leverage.
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
“To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men.”
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Vanished Before He Landed
My client wasn’t supposed to end up in Djibouti. Or South Sudan. Or anywhere but home. But here we are.
We were told he was from Burma. But then ICE gave him a removal notice to South Africa. Then another to South Sudan. Both written in English, which he doesn’t read. No interpreter. No hearing. No lawyer present. And then he was gone.
A few days later, the government changed its story. Said he had a travel document to Burma. Claimed they only found it after the plane left. Now they say they’ll send him there instead.
Here’s my brief recap of the events in my interview with ABC News:
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If you’re confused, you’re not alone. So am I. And, no doubt, so is he.
They didn’t even try to return him to his home country. They picked South Sudan first. A war zone. A place so dangerous the State Department says no American should set foot there. They picked it anyway. For a man who isn’t from there. Who has never been there. Who doesn’t speak the language. They chose the chaos.
Why?
That’s the question this Memorial Day.
In my previous article, I wrote about how my client was disappeared in defiance of a federal court order.
Since then, the story has exploded. You’ve probably seen it. In NBC News. In The Guardian. In Newsweek. In NPR. ABC. Bloomberg. All of them quoting me or citing the case.
Because what happened to my client wasn’t a fluke. It was a signal.
As I told Newsweek:
“The government, they cherry-picked these people because they have criminal records, because they will be unpopular to the public, so that they can use them as tools to evade what's really going on, which is the potentially criminal contempt for a federal judge's order, for curtailing and eroding constitutional rights and legal rights.”
And in my interview with MSN:
“This is important to all of us because it shows that if there is an erosion of due process and legal protections to some — the most vulnerable and unpopular people — that this, at the end of the day, impacts negatively all people living in the United States,” I said. “And it empowers an authoritarian regime to disappear people on a whim, who don't toe the party line, who dissent from their dictates and their plans.”
And as I told The Guardian:
“In fact, this is a death penalty case with traffic court-level procedure,” I said. “Or rather, this procedure wouldn’t even fly in a traffic court.”
What kind of country sends people to countries they don’t belong to, knowing full well those countries are on the verge of civil war? What kind of government disappears men across borders, ignores court orders, and then dares to say it’s acting in the name of law and order?
It wasn’t law. It was leverage.
Foreign Policy by Human Cargo
ICE didn’t just break the rules. They played the world stage. They flew these men, my client among them, into one of the most unstable regions on Earth. And when a federal judge stepped in to stop it, Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State, filed a declaration to the court claiming that the judge’s order caused irreparable harm to U.S. foreign policy.
His words are worth reading closely.
Rubio claimed that halting these removals disrupted quiet negotiations in Libya. That it undermined strategic interests in South Sudan. That it complicated U.S. military logistics in Djibouti.
But he never explained the part that matters most.
Why were we sending people who aren’t from these countries there in the first place?
Rubio’s statement skips that entirely. No justification. No explanation. Just fury that someone noticed.
So we ask again. What’s the trade? Why would Libya, South Sudan, or Djibouti agree to accept non-nationals? What were they offered? Arms? Intelligence? Humanitarian aid? Was there a threat if they refused?
These aren’t theoretical questions. They’re moral ones. And they go to the heart of what kind of country we’re becoming.
We Used to Fight Against This
We’ve fought wars, honored today, against regimes that disappeared people into prisons and black sites. That treated human lives as bargaining chips in geopolitical games. We used to say that’s why we fought, to stop that from happening.
Now we’re doing it.
Not with mass graves or tanks in the streets, but with removal flights in the dead of night. With court filings and press conferences. With euphemisms about foreign policy consequences and quiet diplomacy.
It’s still disappearance. Still state violence. Just packaged in bureaucracy and delivered by men in suits.
And if you think this doesn’t matter because it’s happening to immigrants, think again.
If a government can make someone vanish without process, without oversight, without notice, then the protections we all depend on are fiction. Today it’s men from Burma and Mexico. Tomorrow? Anyone who stands in the way.
Global Alarm Bells Should Be Ringing
International bodies should be investigating. UN Special Rapporteurs. Regional human rights commissions. Anti-torture watchdogs. Every institution designed to stop countries from spiraling into the abyss should be on red alert.
This isn’t some official policy etched in law. It’s something more dangerous. It’s a pattern of behavior, quiet, consistent, and deeply embedded. It’s how power is being wielded in the shadows, not because it’s written down, but because no one has stopped it. And if we don’t name it now, we may not be able to stop what comes next.
We were told these removals were just routine. That they were lawful. That this was business as usual.
But if that’s true, then America is no longer what we claim to be.
What Memorial Day Really Demands
Today is Memorial Day. A day to remember the dead. But if we’re honest, we also have to admit something harder.
The country they died for is slipping away.
So we don’t just remember.
We watch. We ask. We fight.
And we tell the truth.
Because we still can.