Yesterday, a series of protests of Dalfen Industries began in Dallas, since they’ve recently sold a warehouse to ICE in New Jersey.
This began because of a request from patriotic Americans in New Jersey who asked for Texans’ help in opposing a sale.
The sale has apparently gone through, and so the protest has morphed into calling out Dalfen and demanding they back out of the deal.
Eric Folkerth
Others are noting the majority partner in the deal is actually Goldman Sachs.
They are building a new headquarters here in our own city.
I am confident their reckoning will also be coming, as Americans rightly question selling warehouses meant for packages to ICE.
So, let’s go ahead and start now, shall we?
The inclusion of Goldman Sachs in this deal is especially galling in two ways:
First, the American people’s money saved Goldman Sachs in 2008. Whether everyone favored that is another matter. But there’s no doubting it was our money that saved that company. And now, they are profiting from the sale of a warehouse meant for packages to ICE, with the express purpose of housing human beings.
Human beings should not be stored like packages. American companies, public or private, should not be aiding and abetting this, or hiding behind their fiduciary duty to shareholders.
There is a morality here that far outstrips a duty to shareholders.
“There is a morality here that far outstrips a duty to shareholders.”
If corporations are “people,” as the courts have declared, then we have a right to demand they exhibit the morality of ordinary people. And it’s clear the vast majority of Americans oppose what ICE is doing now.
Second, paradoxically, Goldman Sachs’ early founder, William Goldman, understood the dangers of growing authoritarianism. After initially being coy about the Nazi regime, he came back from a trip there in 1933, saying this: “I never would have believed that the worst of the 15th and 16th century would return in this 20th century and of all places in Germany.”
Americans are saying the same thing about their government right now: “I never would have believed this would return.”
And yet, our own government is rounding up thousands of human beings and intends to store them in buildings designed for packages.
A CATO Institute analysis shows the numbers of those with no convictions, or even no charges, has skyrocketed. Further, CATO shows only 5% of those detained by ICE last year had violent criminal convictions.
That percentage is lower than under President Joe Biden.
Yes, you read that right, by percentage these Trump policies are worse at ridding our streets of the so-called “worst of the worst.”
“By percentage these Trump policies are worse at ridding our streets of the so-called ‘worst of the worst.'”
More harmful policies tearing apart families and claiming the intent to do it more but being less effective at even what they claim to want to do.
Why in God’s name, then, should the American people tolerate building mega-detention centers, even larger than any currently known prison, to house people, a majority of whom have no criminal conviction of any kind?
Too many of you are still saying, “I would have never believed my government would do this.” But your government is doing this.
As pastors, we in CLEAR DFW will continue to call this out and demand that all people, migrant and citizen, are treated not just as human beings, but also as children of God.
Our faith demands this.
I’m writing this because ordinary folks in New Jersey asked us to help them.
Migrants also are asking us to help them, too. To center their humanity and stand up to greed and harm.
Let’s all do that, OK?
Eric Folkerth serves as senior pastor at Kessler Park United Methodist Church in Dallas and is a leader in the CLEAR DFW movement. Follow his writing here.