A person escapes slave labor, torture, rape and murder, and illegally crosses a border to a land where such crimes are outlawed, to a land where people have the right to work for wages and are protected by the law.
Anyone in this “free land” who harbors or aides such an escapee is subject to federal prosecution, fines and imprisonment. This was the United States in 1850 when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, legislation requiring that all escaped slaves be returned to the slave-owner and that officials and citizens in free states must cooperate.
Americans in 1850 had to decide where they stood, with the newly passed federal law or with their conscience. The risk was great, for both the runaway slaves and those Americans who might help them.
Today, the Republican Party, the very party which grew from the outrage over the wickedness of the Fugitive Slave Act, now seeks to criminalize every aspect of helping a person who has fled a life of torture, violence and suffering. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 has been updated and amended for the fleeing refugees of 2025.
We are only four months into Donald Trump’s Second Term of Cruelty. Where will we be a year from now? Two years from now? How draconian will the laws be then?
So often, we wish to be part of a moment of great historical importance, a moment when we have to take a risk to save another, to take a stand when others wouldn’t. We feel certain we would know the right thing to do. If only such a moment would come our way.
Today, that moment comes not in whether to provide shelter and safety to a refugee fleeing violence in their home country, a person illegally in the United States.
How will we respond this time? In this century? In this historic moment?
That question is as potent, and as dangerous, today as it was then. For us, and for the victims in the breach.
Brad Wolf is a former prosecutor and co-coordinates the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal.
