Tim Miller

Opinion contributor

Twenty three days.

For 23 days 18 year-old American citizen Francisco Galicia was held in a cage with 60 older men, some of whom were ridden with ticks. He didn’t have access to a bed or a shower. He was given such little sustenance that he lost 26 pounds. He was given no access to a phone or lawyer. For the first two days his mother lived in terror, having no idea where he had gone or what had happened.

You might wonder what the State Department did to free Galicia from such an inhumane detention? The truth is Galicia’s capture and this unconscionable treatment didn’t happen while he was traveling on the DMZ in North Korea, nor in a communist South American dictatorship, nor anywhere in the Middle East. It happened while he was a passenger in a car en route to a soccer camp in Texas.

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Galicia was carrying three kinds of valid ID

The car in which Galicia was riding stopped at a Customs and Border Patrol checkpoint. At the time he was carrying not only his state-issued Texas ID, but a birth certificate listing a hospital in Dallas, and a social security card. As a white person it is unimaginable to me that I would have to feel the need to carry such copious evidence of my citizenship. But for Galicia this was not sufficient; the agents still found him to be “suspicious” because two of the other riders in the car were undocumented. And let’s be honest, because of the color of his skin.

This suspicion led the agents to deny Galicia access to an attorney and put him through a secondary screening with fingerprinting after which they came across a travel visa his mother had lied on years ago. Instead of providing him with the same due process rights that are allowed American citizens accused of the most heinous violent crimes, he was presumed to be an illegal migrant and dumped into a cage like a stray dog at the pound.

Despite, I must repeat, having three forms of valid ID.

With tribalism, we're not in usual times

This is the type of story that in another era would unite all sides of the political divide and be endless fodder for the media. Ostensible limited government, constitutional conservatives, among which I count myself, would unite with liberals in outrage at this abuse of power by a state that denied a citizen his most basic rights in the most horrific way imaginable. But we are not in usual times.

Scared of getting crossways with President Trump, who ascended to office on the back of tough talk on illegal immigration, so-called constitutional conservatives are looking the other way. The same politicians who will tell you that getting kicked off YouTube for posting homophobic videos is a constitutional threat of the highest order are nowhere to be found on the unlawful, un-American detention of a citizen. Senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and John Cornyn, R-Texas, have had nary a word of sympathy for the constituent who suffered in gulag-esque detention in their home state after committing no crime.

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Because even though Galicia is not an undocumented immigrant, he has family members who are, and he seems rather “illegal-ish.” So the Republicans in Congress figure it is better to avoid the ire of the “Mexicans are rapists” tweeter-in-chief than risk coming to the defense of a young Latino. They know that they can get away with it because of the outrage fatigue that afflicts the press and the public these days. Tomorrow we will be on to some other outrage, maybe on ground that is more politically favorable.

We cannot ignore Galicia's story

Such fatigue and cowardice cannot allow us to move on from the plight of Galicia. A son or daughter of the privileged elite in Washington, caged and tormented for 23 days without access to the outside world, would get and deserve both attention and recompense.

Francisco deserves the same. And if we do not grant it to him, there will be more wrongfully caged brown American teenagers in his wake.

Tim Miller is a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee and Jeb Bush 2016. He is a contributor to The Bulwark and a communications consultant in Oakland, California. Follow him on Twitter: @Timodc