Human Trafficking: The Sickening Truth of Our Government
I think one of the scariest situations for anybody is confiding unintentionally in the enemy. I say “confiding unintentionally” because there are many cases of victims seeking help and while doing so, being caught by the same people they trusted. Recently, we’ve seen that human trafficking is expanding not only in other parts of the world but in the United States. Not long ago, 1,500 migrant children went missing in the hands of our government. (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/us/politics/migrant-children-missing.html) This is important because two years ago the subcommittee released a report detailing how health and human service officials placed eight children with human traffickers. Reports indicate that officials didn’t do extensive background checks to protect the unaccompanied minors. As a result, children were placed into the hands of human traffickers and lost track of these children. In order to avoid this, New York Times addressed that the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services Department signed a memorandum of understanding in 2016 to establish joint procedures within one year for dealing with unaccompanied migrant children. However, more than a year ago new guidelines were due for the establishment of joint procedures for migrant children, but the two agencies did not complete them. The fact that our government had no interest in following up with these joint procedures for migrant children is sickening! How can the Unites States of America, “Home of the Free” not follow up with protecting these migrant children? These children were taken away because of their illegality into the country but how does that condemn them from their safety? Why does the government act like the protector of the world but cannot protect migrant children from human traffickers? Instead, of protecting the rights of these children they turn them away like animals to human traffickers. Why does the government do this you ask? They allow this to happen because they don’t care about anyone that is “illegal” in the United States. Like Trump states, “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/us/politics/trump-undocumented-immigrants-animals.html) Trump is finally opening our eyes about the sickening truth of our government and it’s passivity about human trafficking.
In Althusser’s book, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays he talks about two ideologies: Ideological State Apparatus and Oppressive State Apparatus. Examples of Ideological State Apparatus are churches, schools, and entertainment. Oppressive State Apparatus’s are any enforcers like Homeland Security, the county, sheriff, military, ect. Althusser idea of ideology does not reflect the real world but represents the “imaginary relationships of individuals” to the real world. He goes on by adding that, “We are always within ideology because our reliance on language is to establish our reality.” Basically, what this means is that everyone has their own ideology and this ideology comes from our own imagination instead of reflecting the real world. For example, the way someone expresses themselves and their actions reflect their own ideologies rather than the world creating it for them. Althusser adds on by stating that, “Individuals are always-already subjects.” What this means is when we are conceived, the child is going to be appointed by familial ideologies allowing it to be a subject for other ideologies- making the individual accessible to everyone. What he means is that we come into the world with a tabula rasa, blank slate but we later develop into subjects of ideologies. These ideologies can come from family, churches, school, ect. However, when we are not subjects of the ideal ideologies we are confronted with oppressive state apparatus to ensure these ideologies are enforced. In the case of the lost migrant 1,500 children, ideological state apparatus and oppressive state apparatus are working together to create this ideal ideology. To clarify, America has had a problem with illegal immigrants coming to the United States for a long time now and with this recent lost, it is clear that the government doesn’t care for the safety of these children. It’s obvious that the government ideology is to protect “everyone that is American” but if they are not American, they don’t care much about their safety. Not only is it the government’s ideology, but the United States ideology that they don’t care for protection of illegal immigrants like Donald Trump said, “Illegals are animals!”
Throughout these past couple of months, human trafficking has alarmed many. Not only did the recent news story about the 1,500 children missing cause public disorientation, but according to social media, human trafficking has expanded in the US. Many people wonder how this happened but potentially it’s because the oppressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus are working together to create this new ideology. The government acts as an oppressive state apparatus by trying to fight human traffickers by using the ideological state apparatus through media to get people into thinking that they are “taking care of the situation.” However, the government’s passivity of human traffickers gets people thinking that our government is also a subject to this ideology. Their passivity leads one to believe that they don’t care for the safety of others but rather their profits and their own ideologies. This may seem like an extremist approach to believe that our government is a subject to the human trafficking ideology but their passivity about the situation doesn’t seem to frighten them which leads one into thinking that they must be a part of it. This is example is also seen as the Shock Doctrine. In Naomi Klein book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism she introduces this idea of public disorientation and the advantages that the government has when in times of chaos. The Shock Doctrine is a time in which government creates shocks in this case “sex trafficking news” to disorient the public and create this need for government involvement. The government does this with the intention of getting the people to confined in them. The vulnerability of the people is what ultimately leads the government to control its people.
Since, human trafficking is become more prevalent in the United States it makes sense to believe that the government has some sort of involvement or is to some extent aware of it. This is critical information because it’s necessary to be on the lookout for any suspicious behavior or activity that one may encounter. At this point, it’s dangerous to confide in our government because they can potentially be the “bad guys.” This point of this article is to increase awareness in today’s current situation. I think this is necessary because many dismiss the importance of human trafficking but now that it has expanded to the United States its important that we stay aware for the sake of our safety! Better to be safe, then sorry!
Work Cited:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/us/politics/migrant-children-missing.html
https://www.iwnsvg.com/2018/05/03/interpol-overextended-facts-about-svgs-human-trafficking-raid/
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review P, 2001.
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan /Henry Holt, 2007. Print.
