Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Ooooh that smell<\/p>\n
Can\u2019t you smell that smell<\/p>\n
Ooooh that smell<\/p>\n
The smell of death surrounds you<\/p>\n
\u2014 Lynyrd Skynyrd, \u201cThat Smell<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n The United States government might wash its hands of any responsibility for the more than 700,000 human beings who\u2019ve been deported<\/a> since Donald Trump<\/a> returned to the White House some 18 months ago, but it doesn\u2019t take Sherlock Holmes to determine who\u2019s to blame for the blood stains that have been left behind.<\/p>\n Last month, police outside the city of Retalhuleu in southwestern Guatemala found Nixon Giovanni P\u00e9rez Paz, 43, and his wife, Glendy Marisol Gonz\u00e1lez de la Cruz, dead in a sugar cane field. They\u2019d been bound, gagged, and then executed<\/a> by gunshots, with their 14-month-old daughter crying next to her mother\u2019s lifeless body.<\/p>\n When Trump took office in January 2025, the couple was living in a suburb of St. Louis \u2014 working essential jobs and raising their three daughters while seeking to become legal residents of a country that had offered refuge from rampant crime and poverty back home in Guatemala.<\/p>\n The dream turned into a nightmare<\/a> with one traffic stop in April 2025, as P\u00e9rez Paz was driving to work. Although a subsequent NPR investigation found just one permanent mark on his record \u2014 a paid $200 fine for driving without a license \u2014 P\u00e9rez Paz was swiftly deported by U.S. Immigration<\/a> and Customs Enforcement. Gonz\u00e1lez de la Cruz had an active asylum application, but after struggling to support her kids while working two jobs she decided to return home voluntarily.<\/p>\n The couple was murdered only weeks after they reunited in Guatemala.<\/p>\n \u201cIf immigration hadn\u2019t picked up my brother, my sister-in-law would still be alive, and the children wouldn\u2019t be going through this sorrow,\u201d the dead man\u2019s brother, Ronaldo P\u00e9rez Paz. told People magazine. \u201cUnfortunately, immigration \u2014 the (U.S.) government \u2014 doesn\u2019t see that. It makes no difference to them.\u201d<\/p>\n No, it doesn\u2019t. Nor did anyone with that government see the humanity of Daphy Michel<\/a>, a 31-year-old Haitian asylum seeker with a history of mental-health struggles. She ended up in immigration custody after an arrest and was dumped by ICE agents at a Pittsburgh bus stop wearing summer clothes during a brutal February cold snap. She was found dead three days later, and a medical examiner has ruled that Michel\u2019s death was a homicide.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe that we need to observe all our brothers and sisters as neighbors,\u201d Jaime Martinez of the Pittsburgh immigrant-rights group Frontline Dignity told the Guardian<\/a>, invoking the golden rule that was shattered by Trump\u2019s cruelty-is-the-point<\/a> regime.<\/p>\n The smell of death permeates the so-called brain trust of American militarism that decided back in February \u2014 for reasons still unfathomable<\/a> \u2014 to bomb Iran back into the Stone Ages, in an on-again, off-again campaign where it seems the collateral damage is the point.<\/p>\n Last week, according to a deep analysis by the New York Times<\/a>, U.S. forces dropped a massive, 2,000-pound bomb in the middle of a dense residential neighborhood on Iran\u2019s Qeshm Island along the contested Strait of Hormuz, pulverizing a family\u2019s home.<\/p>\n The 3:40 a.m. blast killed Zahra Jafari; her husband, Qeysar Jafari, a taxi driver; and their son Sina, according to Iranian news agencies, who said two other children were rescued alive from the rubble.<\/p>\n Less than halfway through Trump\u2019s second presidency, his strongman rule is increasingly becoming a death cult. The stench of immoral indifference to the humanity of anyone not part of the MAGA movement is spreadingas fast as the COVID-19 virus that helped bring an end to Trump\u2019s disastrous first presidency.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: People are dying in Trump\u2019s squalid concentration camps | Will Bunch<\/a><\/p>\n I realize I\u2019ve probably overused my lifetime quota for invoking one of the greatest four minutes of filmmaking<\/a> I\u2019ve ever seen, but yet again I am reminded of Martin Scorsese\u2019s brilliant montage in Goodfellas as dead bodies pile up in parked Cadillacs or on freezer-truck meat hooks in the wake of a huge armored-car heist. It\u2019s a testament to the greed, brutality, and senseless violence of the mob life.<\/p>\n Today, I can\u2019t help but hear the mournful piano coda from \u201cLayla<\/a>\u201d as I watch the corpses of Trump\u2019s recklessly lethal rule wash up on Caribbean beaches<\/a> near the driftwood of their obliterated fishing boats, or inside the bombed sanctuary of an Iranian girls school<\/a>, or from medical neglect<\/a> inside ICE\u2019s growing gulag archipelago.<\/p>\n The nattering nabobs who scoff at the notion that the United States \u2014 whose president on Saturday posted an AI photo<\/a> of him kissing Jesus on a golden cross wrapped in the American flag \u2014 has sunk into fascism because there are no Auschwitz-style death camps just don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s ICE agents firing bullets<\/a> into an immigrant\u2019s car, or deportation flights that dump its passengers back into the gang violence they thought they\u2019d escaped, or ending the programs that saved millions of kids in Africa from malaria<\/a>, the Trump body count is already into the thousands, and it grows every day of his warped presidency.<\/p>\n The statistics matter, but you can\u2019t put a number on the rank immorality of an utter disregard for whether people who don\u2019t look like you live or die. Whatever the Trump death toll turns out to be, this stain on the American soul is never coming out.<\/p>\n There are rings of death in Donald Trump\u2019s America. There are the direct attacks that jolt the conscience \u2014 the notorious fatal shootings by immigration agents of immigrants such as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo<\/a> and Johan Sebasti\u00e1n Dur\u00e1n Guerrero<\/a> and protesters such as Renee Good<\/a> and Alex Pretti<\/a>, the pointless wars that bombed the Iranian school in Minab<\/a> or an apartment building in Venezuela<\/a>, and the boat attacks on vaguely alleged smugglers off South America that have killed more than 200.<\/a><\/p>\n But there\u2019s also an outer band of gross neglect or indifference to human life that has led to scores of additional deaths, including the more than 50 people<\/a> \u2014 some who\u2019d complained of medical conditions that were ignored \u2014 who\u2019ve died in ICE custody since Trump returned to office, or the unknown number who\u2019d faced murder or poor medical care after deportation to the trouble-laden nations they\u2019d tried to escape.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the biggest \u2014 and most abstract \u2014 ring of all. It\u2019s difficult to agree on an exact count, let alone bring accountability, for what researchers say is a wave of death \u2014 600,000 people, mostly children,<\/a> according to one Boston University study \u2014 that has resulted from the decimation of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). And what will become of the domestic surge of preventable diseases<\/a> such as measles under a government whose top health official is a notorious critic of vaccines? At what point does bad policy become depraved indifference?<\/p>\n Death is contagious. In Ecuador, prosecutor Alexandra Bravo was investigating the U.S. drone strikes that destroyed three of her homeland\u2019s fishing boats when a gunman on a motorcycle assassinated her<\/a> and her sister. There\u2019s no evidence that the United States has any direct responsibility for her death, but there\u2019s every reason to believe she\u2019d still be alive if this Trumpian death cult had not destabilized the planet.<\/p>\n The MAGA movement thrives on a brand of white supremacy that pumps up its adherents by dehumanizing everyone around them. And when people are stripped of their humanity, the Ten Commandments seem to no longer apply to their tormentors. It\u2019s hard to reach Trump\u2019s promised goal of 1 million deportations<\/a> every year unless the deportees are just a number \u2014 not a mom, or a dad, or a cherished neighbor.<\/p>\n A bad president can be replaced every four years. A killing spree screams out for immediate action. We need to take whatever steps are possible right now to stop this rogue government before tomorrow\u2019s headline about the next Nixon Giovanni P\u00e9rez Paz or Daphy Michel.<\/p>\n The stench of death has already become unbearable.<\/p>\n