America’s Moral Collapse Is on a Plane to Libya

America stands at a moral precipice, and we’re about to tumble over the edge. The Trump administration is now planning to transport immigrants on U.S. military planes to detention centers in a warlord-controlled part of Libya, a decision that reveals how far we’ve strayed from our foundational values and basic human decency.

If this shocks you, it sure as hell should. The news broke this week that the administration is preparing to send migrants to Libya on military flights as early as tomorrow. And this isn’t just another policy announcement from the daily outrage factory; it’s the latest escalation in a deliberate strategy of cruelty that began during President Donald Trump’s first term.

The timing is no coincidence. Just last week, Saddam Haftar — yes, that’s his actual name — the son of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, visited Washington and met with Trump’s advisers including Massad Boulos (Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law) at the State Department. The younger Haftar commands eastern Libya’s land forces and represents his father’s self-styled “Libyan National Army” militia.

This isn’t even the official government of Libya that the Trump family is doing business with; it’s the half of the country that’s run by a warlord the U.N. doesn’t recognize!

But let’s back up and ask the most fundamental question: Why the hell are we sending immigrants to prison at all, instead of simply deporting them back to their countries of origin like Obama did?

Crossing the border without authorization is primarily a civil violation, not a criminal offense worthy of imprisonment. These aren’t violent criminals; they’re people seeking safety, work or a better life. Many were literally fleeing for their lives. Yet instead of processing and returning them through established deportation channels and procedures, Trump is creating a shadow penal system outside of normal judicial oversight. But why?

The answer, as with so many things in this administration, appears to be a toxic blend of profit, politics and purposeful cruelty.

When Trump started shipping migrants to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT concentration camp this year, he and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele struck a $6 million deal to detain about 300 migrants there for one year. Now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is openly boasting about the administration’s efforts to find more countries willing to imprison migrants.

“Follow the money” is always good advice in Washington. It’s hardly coincidental that this Libya deportation scheme comes immediately after Saddam Haftar’s visit to Washington. The Trump family has had friendly relations with warlord Haftar’s regime since Trump’s first term, when he shocked the diplomatic community by giving Khalifa Haftar a supportive phone call in 2019 that completely contradicted the State Department’s and the U.N.’s official position.

“I say this unapologetically,” Rubio declared at a recent Cabinet meeting. “We are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries. We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries — will you do that as a favor to us?’”

Let that sink in for a minute. Our Secretary of State is publicly describing migrants — many of whom have committed no crime beyond crossing a border without permission — as “the most despicable human beings.” This dehumanizing language isn’t accidental; it’s strategic. It prepares the American public to accept increasingly inhumane treatment of migrants by portraying them as somehow deserving of such cruelty.

This is where the brutal reality of warlord-run Libyan detention centers enters the picture, and where it gets even more disturbing.

Human rights organizations have documented horrific conditions in Libya’s migrant detention facilities for years. The country has been in chaos since the 2011 revolution, with rival governments and militias vying for control. The eastern half is controlled by Haftar’s forces, while the western half including Tripoli is run by the internationally recognized Government of National Accord. Migrants caught in this system face unimaginable suffering.

What are these places like? Amnesty International has documented “severe beatings, sexual violence, extortion, forced labor and inhuman conditions” in these prisons. Detainees report being starved, tortured and subjected to extortion. Guards have been documented shooting at detainees for sport, causing deaths and injuries. Women have described being coerced into sex in exchange for food or promises of freedom.

The State Department’s own annual report — yes, our OWN government’s report — described conditions in Libya’s detention centers as “harsh and life-threatening” with migrants having “no access to immigration courts or due process.” Doctors Without Borders has documented female detainees being told by guards, “You’re going to die here.”

These aren’t exaggerations or hysterical claims from the left. These are documented realities from respected international organizations, the State Department and the United Nations. And this administration damn well knows it.

Libya’s detention centers are run by various private armed groups in a fractured country with no stable central authority. Some centers are essentially criminal enterprises run by human traffickers. Migrants are frequently held for ransom, with those unable to pay facing execution. Many facilities have become sites of forced labor, beatings, rape, torture and murder.

This is the system to which the Trump administration plans to deliver people who came to America seeking safety and opportunity. And for what? A sweetheart deal with the Haftar regime that controls most of Libya’s oil resources?

And now we’re getting reports that ICE is locking immigrants in solitary confinement as punishment for not signing a document agreeing to be deported to one of these Libyan hellholes.

As Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., told Raw Story:

“It’s deeply distressing and disturbing to think that there would be a time in this country where we would find the worst places to deport people to instead of places where they came from. Their homelands. Not sending them back there but sending them to the worst location we could send them to just to punish them.”

Why is all this happening? Because this is a continuation of the strategy first employed by Trump and his immigration architect Stephen Miller during the previous Trump administration, when they deliberately separated children from their parents at the border. The calculation was brutally simple: If America becomes known for extreme cruelty toward migrants, fewer people will attempt to come here.

It’s deterrence through atrocity. A strategy that says, “We’ll make examples of these people by subjecting them to such extreme suffering that others will be too terrified to follow in their footsteps.”

But here’s what these sadistic bastards don’t get: this strategy doesn’t just harm migrants. It corrupts America’s soul. It transforms us from a nation that, despite our many failings, at least aspired to ideals of human dignity and justice, into one that purposefully inflicts suffering as policy.

As President Joe Biden would say, “This is not who we are.” Except now, under Trump, it apparently is.

And don’t fall for their justifications. The administration claims they’re only targeting “criminals” and “gang members.” But we’ve already seen that this is false. Kilmar Abrego Garcia and a young man known in court only as “Cristian” were among those deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.

According to their families and lawyers, their “crimes” amounted to having tattoos that authorities associated with gang membership. Federal judges ordered both men returned to the U.S., but they remain imprisoned.

So, let’s cut the crap: Trump and Miller’s policy of mass detention isn’t about safety or security. It’s about punishment, deterrence and performing cruelty for political gain the same way dictators around the world run their countries.

And cruelty inflicted like this, now “limited” to immigrants, rarely stays limited; what Trump and the GOP do to the least of us, history says, they’ll ultimately do to all of us.

And why isn’t anyone talking about the money? Millions of dollars are being funneled to private detention contractors and foreign governments through these agreements. Who’s profiting? Follow the damn money.

When Trump and Bukele struck their $6 million deal for El Salvador to detain migrants, where did that money actually go? And who stands to profit from similar arrangements with Libya, Rwanda and other countries reportedly in talks with the administration?

It’s no coincidence that just days after meeting with Libyan warlord Haftar’s son, the Trump administration is ready to ship migrants to Libya’s hellhole prisons. The stated reason for that meeting was that Libya “would be better positioned to engage with the United States and U.S. companies,” meaning more oil contracts and business deals. (Haftar now controls most of Libya’s oil wells.) Connect the dots!

These “deportation partnerships” represent a disturbing privatization and internationalization of immigrant detention, moving it further from public scrutiny and constitutional protections. They create a shadow system where basic human rights and due process are easily discarded.

This isn’t just happening to “them”: it’s happening to us. Every time we allow our government to treat any human being as disposable, we diminish our own humanity. Every time we turn away from cruel policies because they don’t affect “people like us,” we chip away at the moral foundations that protect all of us.

And make no mistake: this slippery slope is real and dangerous. The Trump administration has already floated the idea of detaining U.S. citizens abroad. In conversations with El Salvador’s president last month, Trump was overheard saying, “The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places.”

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the administration’s legal arguments suggest the U.S. government believes it “could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.”

This should terrify every American, regardless of political affiliation. When we build systems of unchecked power and cruelty for use against the most vulnerable, history tells us those systems rarely remain confined to their original targets.

So what can we do?

First, we must break through the normalization of cruelty. Call your representatives in Congress today and demand they oppose these deportation schemes. Insist on hearings, investigations and legislation to block funding for these programs.

Second, support the legal challenges already underway. The ACLU and other organizations are challenging these deportations in court. They need our vocal and financial support.

Third, keep this issue visible. Share accurate information about these detention centers and what’s happening to the people sent there. Don’t let this fade from public consciousness in the endless churn of outrages.

Fourth, demand transparency. Where is the money going? What are the terms of the agreements with Haftar’s regime? Who’s profiting? What oversight exists to ensure humane treatment?

And finally, remember this: America is better than this. We’ve lost our way before, and we’ve found our way back. From the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to the separation of families at the border in 2018, we have periodically succumbed to our worst instincts. But we have also, eventually, recognized our errors and sought to correct them.

The question now is how much suffering we’ll allow before that correction begins. How many people will be condemned to Libya’s hellish prisons — run by a warlord whose son was just welcomed at the State Department — before we say, “Enough is enough”?

Call your representatives today: 202-224-3121. Tell them America doesn’t torture people to send a message. Tell them we are better than this.

Because if we aren’t, what exactly are we defending in this land of the free?