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" For a while now, The Guardian has been banging the drum regarding the horrific conditions on Nauru, an island nation in the South Pacific that has been used by Australia as a kind of low-level concentration camp for refugees fleeing the chaos and bloodshed in the Middle East. On August 10, The Guardian wrote at length about conditions there based on 2000 documents leaked to the news organization. The contents are very nearly beyond belief. The Guardian&amp;#039;s analysis of the files reveal that children are vastly over-represented in the reports. More than half of the 2,116 reports \u2013 a total of 1,086 incidents, or 51.3% \u2013 involve children, although children made up only about 18% of those in detention on Nauru during the time covered by the reports, May 2013 to October 2015. The findings come just weeks after the brutal treatment of young people in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory was exposed, leading to the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announcing a wide-ranging public inquiry. The reports range from a guard allegedly grabbing a boy and threatening to kill him once he is living in the community to guards allegedly slapping children in the face. In September 2014 a teacher reported that a young classroom helper had requested a four-minute shower instead of a two-minute shower. &amp;quot;Her request has been accepted on condition of sexual favours. It is a male security person. She did not state if this has or hasn&amp;#039;t occurred. The security officer wants to view a boy or girl having a shower.&amp;quot; Some reports contain distressing examples of behaviour by traumatised children. According to a report from September 2014, a girl had sewn her lips together. A guard saw her and began laughing at her. In July that year a child under the age of 10 undressed and invited a group of adults to insert their fingers into her vagina; in February 2015 a young girl gestured to her vagina and said a male asylum seeker &amp;quot;cut her from under&amp;quot;. In the files there are seven reports of sexual assault of children, 59 reports of assault on children, 30 of self-harm involving children and 159 of threatened self-harm involving children. You will not be surprised to know that Australia has subcontracted the job of running the facilities on Nauru to private companies, and you also will not be surprised to know that access to the facilities is rigidly controlled. Wilson Security has previously told the Australian parliament it had &amp;quot;robust policies, procedures and processes that support the operations in Nauru&amp;quot;. It continued: &amp;quot;Allegations of sexual assault are treated in a timely and sensitive manner. Where Wilson Security receives an allegation we take immediate action following disclosure or notification.&amp;quot; But the files show a very different picture. Rather than serious events diminishing, they continued \u2013 and in some cases escalated \u2013 during the course of 2015. A vast number of incidents from across the timeframe have never before been reported. Events on the island are reported sporadically through refugee advocates and whistleblowers, but the Australian government&amp;#039;s policy of shrouding its offshore detention centres in secrecy has prevented the reporting of many serious incidents. The Nauru files shatter that secrecy. It is a legitimate human horror story, and The Guardian is to be commended for bringing it to a world that pretty much is ignoring it anyway. (The most recent episode concerned an elderly Afghan man who is not being allowed off the island for treatment of a serious coronary issue.) Beyond that, however, I bring it up here because a bell went off in my memory while reading about the Nauru camp, and I remembered something the U.S. Supreme Court said once. It was because we could not reject the finding of the military authorities that it was impossible to bring about an immediate segregation of the disloyal from the loyal that we sustained the validity of the curfew order as applying to the whole group. In the instant case, temporary exclusion of the entire group was rested by the military on the same ground.  That was the case of Korematsu v. United States which, by a 6-3 vote, upheld the government&amp;#039;s right to incarcerate citizens of Japanese origins in internment camps. And, while that decision is recognized now as one of the worst in history, and while reparations have been paid to thousands of Japanese-American families, Korematsu never has been overturned. It sits there, a land mine in the law, waiting, perhaps for a swaggering authoritarian know-nothing of a president given to public pronouncements like this one, per CNN: &amp;quot;I think this is something that will maybe get -- will happen perhaps more and more all over the country,&amp;quot; Trump told &amp;quot;Fox and Friends.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a mess, and it&amp;#039;s a shame, and we&amp;#039;re going to have to be very tough.&amp;quot; Trump also said he agreed with early reports of a possible foreign connection to the bombings. &amp;quot;I think there is -- I think there&amp;#039;s many foreign connections,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;You have many, many groups, because we&amp;#039;re allowing these people to come into our country and destroy our country and make it unsafe for people,&amp;quot; the Republican nominee added, arguing that the stricter immigration policies he has proposed would better protect the US from terror. Trump also took aim at &amp;quot;magazines&amp;quot; and other media that publish instructions on how to make explosive devices, saying, &amp;quot;Those people should be arrested because they are inciting violence.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;So I see the other day, and they&amp;#039;re all talking about it so wonderfully because it&amp;#039;s called freedom of the press -- where you buy magazines and they tell you how to make the same bombs that you saw. I would -- now people will go crazy, they&amp;#039;ll say Trump is against freedom of the press. I&amp;#039;m totally in favor of freedom of the press. But how do you allow magazines to be sold -- these are magazines that tell you, from step one, go to the store and buy such-and-such, right?&amp;quot; He continued, &amp;quot;Those people should be arrested because they are inciting violence, OK. They are making violence possible. They should be arrested immediately. They have websites that tell how to make bombs, how to make all sorts of things that are totally destructive, and you know where they are coming from, and yet we don&amp;#039;t want to touch them because of freedom of speech.&amp;quot; You think a guy that inclined to un-American, totalitarian solutions won&amp;#039;t find a way to use Korematsu to his own advantage? You think a guy like that even would blink at setting up little Naurus for refugees in secluded places all over the country, or that he wouldn&amp;#039;t get the votes in Congress to do that, or that his Supreme Court appointees wouldn&amp;#039;t uphold it?  Can I have a bunk by the window, please? Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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