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@ChaseMadar Just looking at it analytically, the odds suggest things will get much worse. There's so much to cover, I can't put it all in a couple tweets. I really need to write a piece on this. But here are a few random things.
@ChaseMadar 1) so far, what the US is doing is similar to some prior systems, all of which degenerated further before they were ended (and many of which are still defended in surprising places today).
@ChaseMadar 2) Big camp systems don't close themselves. Legislatures have never closed them against the will of an executive. This Supreme Court seems inclined to give the executive power it's historically had access to, even if that power might appear to be abused in current circumstances
@ChaseMadar 3) So I don't think the current court will end this camp system--they are far more likely to institutionalize it by half-measures, as has happened with Guantanamo.
@ChaseMadar 4) The longer a camp system stays open, the more predictable things will go wrong (contagious diseases, malnutrition, mental health issues). In addition, every significant camp system has also introduced new horrors of its own, that were unforeseen when that system was opened.
@ChaseMadar 5) We now have a *massive* & growing camp system, with no powerful opposition in sight. Though there's a chance protest could work in the US (despite the fact that it hasn't happened in other cases), people aren't in the streets every night, demanding an end to the camps.
@ChaseMadar 6) Miller and Trump seem to have purged much of the DHS opposition, even though much of it was willing to be complicit. This kind of power struggle in the early years of a system is typical.
@ChaseMadar 7) If those who want to expand irregular detention win the fight (as they appear to have here), conditions tend to worsen significantly & become more punitive. It's unusual for any system that survives this crisis point to close w/o serious intervention from an outside country.
@ChaseMadar 8) That said, US institutions *did* decide to close Japanese American camps in the US prior to the end of WWII. But problematic as the Court was then, I do not think the majority of the current Supreme Court is as thoughtful on these kinds of issues as it was in Ex parte Endo.
@ChaseMadar 9) So, to sum up this brief sketch, the longer camps stay open, the worse they get, esp. if they survive their existential crisis & pass a 3- or 4-year mark. I don't see any current force in the US able & willing to close them, short of popular protest, which isn't happening yet.
@ChaseMadar 10) Is it *possible* they'll close? Absolutely. But one of the big mistakes I saw when I visited the Rohingya camps a year before the ethnic cleansing was that a lot of observers were confusing the possible and the probable. The probability is that things will get worse. --FIN
