A Holocaust survivor and U.S. military veteran testified against anti-immigrant bills pending in the Michigan House of Representatives, describing a childhood lived in constant fear and comparing Trump’s mass deportation force to the arrests of Jewish people by the Nazis.
Civil rights advocate, Rene Lichtman, 79, noted his testimony fell on the anniversary of the tragic 1939 voyage of the SS St. Louis. Due to anti-Jewish hostility, the ship—carrying nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees—was turned away from Canada, Cuba, and the U.S. While a handful were able to disembark in Cuba, the rest were forced to return to Europe and an untold number died in the Holocaust.
At times holding up old black and white photos of family members, Lichtman warned legislators—and the rest of us—that he now sees “a lot of parallels” in the Trump era:
“I’m a child survivor of the Holocaust,” Lichtman said. “I was about 2 years old when the war began and I went into hiding. My family members were picked up in the streets of Paris in the very same way that ICE people are deputizing local police and picking [undocumented immigrants] up in the streets.”
He said that the French police, “deputized by the Nazis,” kept lists of Jews in Paris, “including Jewish children, including children on my street, who were picked up and went to the gas chambers while I was fortunate to be in hiding.”
“I see a lot of parallels to what is going on in cities like Ann Arbor and Pontiac, where ICE is coming in and with the help of the local police are picking up immigrants,” Lichtman said.
If passed, the House legislation would not only help ramp up deportations by “[preventing] cities from enacting policies that limit cooperation between local authorities”—mirroring anti-sanctuary city bills recently seen in states like Texas—but also make communities less safe by breaking the trust between immigrant communities and police. Instead, as Lichtman warns, police will be forced to collaborate with federal immigration agents.
“I can empathize with these people because I’ve been there,” Lichtman said. “It’s tearing families apart.”
In one of the most striking moments of his testimony, Lichtman described a short time when he discovered he may have been undocumented, something he only found out when he was in the Army. The incident mirrors something many Dreamers go through today, when they find out they are undocumented only when they attempt to apply for financial aid or a driver’s license at the DMV, and discover they have no Social Security number:
“He says, ‘What are you doing working in an intelligence unit in the army?’” Lichtman recalled. “I said, ‘Sir, I don’t know, you know I came here, I assumed I became a citizen automatically when my mother married an American citizen.’ He said, ‘Well, that isn’t the case, so get your butt into town and go see Judge so-and-so.’”
Lichtman, who came to the U.S. at age 13, said the process to get his citizenship papers was fairly simple.
“Today I would probably be ― ICE could have been called on me and I would have been shipped off,” he concluded in his testimony.
ICE told Huffington Post that the agency “does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately,” but this is unsurprisingly a flat-out lie. In Ann Arbor last month, ICE agents enjoyed a breakfast of waffles with bacon and egg whites made by immigrant employees before rounding up at least three of them in a raid. Their target was not there that day. ICE may not like to describe this immigration operation as a “sweep” or “raid,” but that’s exactly what it is.
Despite Lichtman’s searing testimony, Michigan House Republicans despicably passed the anti-immigrant bills, where they will soon head to the full House for a vote.
Lichtman’s must-watch testimony to the Michigan House is below.