On the dangers of complicity

While in a personal capacity, I write as a member of the Flathead County Transportation Advisory Committee, a great-great grandson of a World War I and II veteran officer and war crimes trial judge, and a resident of a community where neighbors have disappeared. I write because silence, at this moment, would be a betrayal to the people I love and everything I claim to stand for.

Our transportation infrastructure—roads, airports, and rail—is publicly funded to serve the public. These systems are meant to connect society: to strengthen communities, support economic growth, and ensure people can safely access work, school, groceries, and medical care. Much more work remains to fully realize a future of efficient, affordable, accessible, and cleaner transit. As far as public infrastructure is concerned, that is the direction we must travel if we wish to secure a livable future. That has always been the aim of my work, and the work of many others—serving the needs of the people. When I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, it was never my understanding that the tools of government were meant to become the scaffolding of injustice.

And yet, that is exactly how they are being used. Avelo Airlines, currently operating out of Glacier Park International Airport, has participated in deportation flights of people illegally detained elsewhere. While those specific flights have not yet taken off from Kalispell, the presence of such a company in our community should raise alarm. Because infrastructure use is not neutral. It either serves just causes or facilitates injustice. There is no in-between.

Our legal structure—law enforcement, the courts, and the constitutions of the United States and Montana—is publicly funded, and popularly organized, to serve the public. These systems are structured under a federal constitutional republic. The U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land, is organized into seven articles and 27 amendments, each outlining the division of powers and the responsibilities of governance.

Article I vests “all legislative Powers,” the authority to make all federal law, in Congress.

Article II vests “executive Powers” and duties to the President.

Article III vests the “judicial Power” in the Supreme Court and lower courts.

Articles IV through VII address the states, amendment processes, supremacy of the Constitution, and oaths of office.

The Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments guarantee individual liberties, protections, and due process.

These structures are meant to uphold justice—not to be wielded as blunt instruments of oppression. And yet, we see the roads, the planes, and law enforcement itself used in the service of injustice—to consolidate power, suppress dissent, and deny people their humanity.

When I recently spoke at a Columbia Falls City Council meeting, I reminded our leaders: “Liberty is not a privilege for the few, but a right for all.” I spoke of Beker Rengifo, a man from Kalispell who was stopped for a broken taillight in Whitefish. That routine traffic stop spiraled into a denial of representation, of due process, of food, and of dignity. His basic rights were stripped away—not as an accident, but as part of a project to make the government serve an oligarchy, designed to instill fear and suppress democracy.

That same night, when the mayor asked the police chief a direct question—when and under what circumstances does the department involve ICE or CBP—the city attorney abruptly interrupted before the chief could answer. That silence is telling. When those tasked with upholding transparency deflect or obstruct, we must ask: What are they hiding? What is to be gained—and what stands to be lost? Why does fear take root among a free people?

The Montana Constitution promises: “The dignity of the human being is inviolable.” That must mean something. Dignity and rights are not rewards we give only to those we like. It’s what in the land of the freed we defend precisely when it is under attack.

The U.S. Constitution declares: “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” It says “person”—not “citizen,” not “legal resident,” not “deserving.” That language was deliberate. Our rights are not conditional. Not negotiable. Not optional.

And yet we are watching the very institutions sworn to uphold those rights be used to violate them. We are watching infrastructure, paid for by all of us, weaponized against the most vulnerable among us. This is not justice. It is lawlessness enshrined. The law is being broken by those who swore to defend it.

This degradation of justice and liberty is personal to me in many ways. My great-great grandfather, Colonel Selby F. Little Sr., served as Deputy Security Commandant of the Nuremberg Prison during the War Crimes Trials. He also served as a judge at the Ludwigsburg War Crimes Trials. He bore witness to how infrastructure—trains, bureaucracies, uniforms—and silence became tools of genocide.

The Nazi’s trains ran on time. They ran to Auschwitz. To death camps. To forced labor sites.

Let us not pretend history belongs only to the past. While Auschwitz was in Poland, our Guantánamo is in Cuba. Our future Dachaus are being outsourced to corrupt regimes like El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison.

When we allow public infrastructure and dollars to serve injustice, we walk further down that same dark path. Many people are rightly outraged. So, let’s be clear: We are not radicals for demanding justice—we are realists demanding justice and accountability. We are people who know history. People who see the signs. People who refuse to be complicit.

Howard Zinn once said: “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” And the train is moving—down the tracks to a dangerous and deadly America few will recognize outside our darkest nightmares. Illegal detentions are ongoing. The flights are being scheduled. The backroom deals are happening. And the silence from many of our governmental and corporate leaders? Deafening.

I will not be silent. All of us must rise to this test. Because this is the ultimate test of the will of a free people—to throw off tyranny, and to demand a better future. The ones our ancestors wished for us. Public infrastructure and public service must serve the people. Not the profiteers. Not the deportation agencies. Not the architects of fear. If we allow our roads and airports to become tools of repression, then we—the public—are no longer the beneficiaries. We become the fuel. The taxpayers funding our own undoing.

This is a call to our community: Do not look away. Do not shrug. Do not wait.

The question is not whether this could happen here—it already is.

Act—not out of fear, but out of love. Love for our neighbors. Love for the rule of law: those wise restraints that make us free. Love for a country whose values are worth defending.

Because if we allow injustice to take root in the systems meant to serve us, then justice will die in the land of the free. Freedom will become folklore—reduced to a story of life our children will not know. We descend into the American Dark Ages. And the headstone will read:

“Here Lies the Republic.

Mourned by Many.

Defended by Few.”

Colton Little

Columbia Falls