The Concentration Camp Pipeline

Trump’s State-Sanctioned Kidnapping Threats, RFK’s Eugenics, and the Infrastructure of 21st Century Fascism

They told us it couldn’t happen here. That the mass internments, the political exiles, the registries—those were the horrors of another era.

But on February 20, 2024, during a Fox News town hall, former President Donald Trump told the nation otherwise. “We’re going to start deporting people,” he said. “I’m looking into sending criminals and illegals to other countries like El Salvador. They’re good at dealing with bad guys.” [Fox News, Feb 2024]

He was referring to CECOT, a mega-prison in El Salvador designed by President Nayib Bukele. It holds up to 40,000 people, most without trial. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have condemned it as a human rights catastrophe. [Reuters, Feb 2023]

This was not a slip. It was a signal.

In the same year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—an independent presidential candidate—proposed a federal autism registry. At a campaign event, he stated that autistic people “don’t pay taxes and can’t contribute to society.” [The Guardian, Apr 2024]

Historians and disability rights advocates were quick to sound the alarm. The plan evokes the early framework of Aktion T4, a Nazi-era euthanasia program that targeted disabled people as “burdens” to the state. [USHMM, 2024]