"Like Prime, but with human beings"

“We need to get better at treating this like a business,” ICE Acting Director Todd M. Lyons said at a border security conference in April, according to the Arizona Mirror.

The administration’s goal, he said, was to deport immigrants as efficiently as Amazon moves packages:

“Like Prime, but with human beings.”

Commercial real estate experts say concentrating detainees in warehouses would create its own logistical problems. Such structures are designed for storage and shipping, not human habitation.

They tend to be poorly ventilated and lack precise temperature controls — and, because they are typically located far from residential areas, they may not have access to the plumbing and sanitation systems needed to support thousands of full-time residents.

“It’s dehumanizing,” said Tania Wolf, an advocate with the National Immigration Project who is based in New Orleans — about one hour south from the site of a planned warehouse in Hammond, La.

“You’re treating people, for lack of a better term, like cattle.”

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/12/24/ice-immigrants-detention-warehouses-deportation-trump/

See also: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-railways-and-the-holocaust

Nazi Germany’s Reichsbahn treated humans as "cargo," optimizing logistics via transit "warehouses" and standardized "bulk shipments."

By integrating cattle-car transports into national rail schedules, they achieved terrifying efficiency, managing millions like a routine industrial supply chain.

👀

Wannseekonferenz – Wikipedia

@parents4future But they need more middle men to make more money off the taxpayers.

@parents4future
I seem to recall that for the Nazis, they actually endeavored to make the rail transport of detainees purposefully slow and inhumane.
IIRC they decided it was more efficient and convenient if as many detainees as possible died in the rail cars, rather than at a processing facility or in the camps.

So, they were very fast to get detainees on the trains, but then they were meandered around the system, parked on sidings for extended periods, etc.

@parents4future like nazi Germany where people were transported in cattle trainwagons and they created 'efficiency' in their Konzentrationslager?! They really aspire to become the fourth Reich 😱
@parents4future FTR: Eichmann, the organizer of Holocaust logistics, got hanged for the efficiency he achieved.

@parents4future
putting aside for a second that he's obviously (and probably deliberately) echoing nazi germany:

as efficiently as amazon? who deliver multiple items to the same address each in a seperate box, five sizes too big, and each sent in a separate van?

@parents4future another image springs to mind, an image that has been seared into my brain since secondary school history lessons. Diagrams of humanity as cargo-- so neatly set out, so washed of its true implication.
@parents4future reminds me of Katz's "The Ethic of Expediency" on how the Nazis relied on using language in a way that increased efficiency of their processes and tech while also obscuring the realities of what the processes and tech were doing. If people are reduced to things and numbers it's easier to hide the horror of their crimes. http://www.culik.com/311summer07/revmallaby/Ethic_of_Expediency.pdf
@parents4future weiß nicht, wie man davor noch die Augen verschließen kann und sich dann noch morgens im Spiegel ansehen mag.
Das geht doch nur mit kompletter Abwesenheit jeglicher Empathie.

@duncan_blues

@parents4future

Exactly what Hannah Arendt ment by the banality of evil.

@duncan_blues @parents4future Abwesenheit jeglicher Menschlichkeit! ✊😡👍
@angel @parents4future
Empathie ist essenzielle Zutat für Menschlichkeit.
@duncan_blues @parents4future Nein, ich kann auch ein empathisches Arschloch sein! ☝
#Trumpregime comment: "Yeah, but we hung the experts on that accidentally; for some reason, there was a wokish mindset 80 years ago."
@parents4future Right. That's what the goal of the Endlösung was!
@parents4future
Deportations-Konzepte führen zum Völkermord.
Völkermord führt zu Bürgerkrieg.
Will Trump mit seinen ICE- Schärgen wirklich sein Land komplett zerstören?
@sebiturbo @parents4future Entschuldigung, aber dass Sie jetzt das Bild eines Produkts der Deutschen Bahn posten, welches nichts mit der Behörde in den USA gemeinsam hat, finde ich einfach nur dumm und unpassend: Da bleibt zum Selbstschutz einfach nur #mute und #block. Schöne Festtage👋
@horn @parents4future
Das ist leider mein Humor.
So im postillionschen Sinne.
Ich wollte niemand damit beleidigen.
Das ist vielleicht nicht ganz angebracht, aber ich finde es immer noch lustig.
Ich glaube ich wurde hier noch nie geblockt. Das ist jetzt eine Premiere.
Das was in Amerika abläuft ist mehr als grausig und glaubt mir, alle, wenn jemand gegen die totale Zerstörung der Demokratie, gegen Populismus, Rechtsextremismus und Faschismus kämpft dann bin ich immer vorne mit dabei.

@parents4future

The Nazis treated people like cattle

American Christian Nationalists are treating people like packages.

This could end American democracy, as well as the belief in Christianity in America.

What a great message for Christmas from MAGA Republicans

@SeanPLynch @parents4future "The Nazis treated people like cattle"

That's true, but doesn't grab the whole scope.

Since about 1942 the KZs belonged to the "Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA)" of the SS. That (roughly translated as "economy and administration office") was a part of the central government. It was part of the SS, but it's main scope that the "economic" use of KZ inmates .

The extracted e.g. teeth of killed inmates. Or they sold their household belongings. The money was then used by the government to drive the oppression of the german people AND the extermination of gypsies, Yehova's witnesses, Yews, some disabled people AND to fuel their attack war and oppression of other countries.

It was the economic aspect that made this run so long!

KZ inmates were income!

@parents4future Das ist unmenschlich und entsetzlich!
@parents4future If today's USA were to win the WW2, they would make sure to not only paperclip the rocket dudes, but to also grab the logistics experts.
@parents4future
I wonder how it'll feel when they read that back at his trial?
@parents4future don't tell him that gas chambers are even cheaper.
@parents4future Kühne und Nagel might have hints for processing their properties.
@parents4future This seems to ignore the problem of bottle-necking, or at least seems not to address that inescapable issue. However evil you are, you can't get around the laws of physics. Unless every part of your chain has comparable throughput, at some point you're going to have a pile-up. It's looking to me like that will be here. I even think that they're already aware of that, but just don't give a shit.
@wesdym ...but also a little off the mark; this is serious fascist bullshit, and we should make that clear from the outset.
@parents4future What I mean is that for all their fascist scheming, they're still incompetent bumblers. This is going to make it all much worse, escalating oppression to likely crimes against humanity. I hope this will be documented, in case they might ever be held responsible.
@parents4future The password is "sabotage."
@parents4future What we need, is to get those would-be holocaust repeaters out of power before they take us somewhere we can’t get back from. tick tick.
Ice director wants to run deportations like ‘Amazon Prime for human beings’

Todd Lyons said he wanted US immigration agency to be ‘like a business’ in its deportation process

The Guardian
@parents4future
Like this? This ship carried as many as 740 enslaved men, women, and children.
@parents4future im surprised he even refers to them as human beings tbh