State Rep. Greg Markkanen, R-Hancock, who represents the 110th District, recently introduced House Resolution 151 urging the federal government to purchase the former Ojibway Correctional Facility in Gogebic County.

Markkanen suggests the federal government could turn the facility into a detention and deportation center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, like the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” erected in Florida earlier this year for the same purposes.

The Michigan Department of Corrections closed the Ojibway Correctional Facility in 2018. The Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget has been attempting to sell the property since 2021.

“The closure resulted in the loss of hundreds of jobs for hardworking Michiganders dedicated to protecting their community,” Markkanen’s resolution reads.

It continues, “In support of President Donald Trump’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration, the state of Florida has recently repurposed a little used airport in Miami-Dade County to convert it into a new migrant detention facility – dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’

“… Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term in office, arrests made by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Michigan have increased by 154 percent. As the number of arrests continues to rise, so does the need to have more space to hold detainees. The addition of another dedicated federal detention and deportation facility in Michigan would go far in furthering President Trump’s policy goals.”

Though Rep. Markkanen may see himself as foot soldier ready to fulfill the wants and needs of President Trump, this is a bad idea for people of good conscience, charity, integrity and honor, of whom I presume there to be no shortage of in the Upper Peninsula.

Gogebic County suffered greatly with the unfortunate closure of the correctional facility, and new jobs would certainly be welcomed, but not jobs at any cost.

Working for a facility like “Alligator Alcatraz” is to support a cruel and dehumanizing system of intimidation, confinement and deportation.

In the name of the American people, immigrants are being terrorized, threatened and, in some cases, brutally arrested by masked, unidentified immigration agents.

Detainees – many with scant or no criminal records – have been flown to terror prisons in far-flung countries with little regard for their safety, rights or humanity.

This is hateful, anti-immigration policy in a pluralist society built by immigrants, in a democracy that champions the diversity and unity of America – e pluribus unum.

All of this is disgraceful, unnecessary and anti-American.

We don’t need a home-grown version of Florida’s alligator prison here in the U.P.

Trump’s immigration policy architect Stephen Miller has said that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

That reminds me of an old photograph I saw that was taken outside Negaunee in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was holding a rally there, and enjoying a resurgence across the country.

Klansmen held a banner up that read “100 percent American.”

In those days, in the wake of World War I, the Klan offered a range of scapegoats for people fearing rapid social and cultural change, with a focus on promoting traditional values, nativism and white nationalism.

It seems like everything that’s old is new again.

Pointed hats for pointed heads, little brains for tiny thinking.

We always have been a nation of immigrants. It’s one of our greatest strengths.

Every recent president prior to President Trump recognized this fact.

Let’s stay on the right side of history and not support Markkanen’s bad idea.