Gov. Kelly Ayotte seems to have found herself in a bit of a conundrum. She rode the MAGA wave to election in Nov. 2025, ripping off President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency with her own Committee of Government Efficiency and she has not looked back. As we have seen over this past year of the Trump regime, the rising tides of social disorder influenced by the barbarous tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have left a stench of incompetence on the Republican party that they cannot seem to wash off. Ayotte and N.H. Republicans seem to wallow in this stench with pride.
News broke with the location of the proposed ICE detention center tentatively at 50 Robert Milligan Parkway in Merrimack, N.H., following a right-to-know request by the N.H. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU-NH) in early February. Since then, Ayotte has devolved into the mess of the century.
In response to the supposed confusion, Ayotte asked for the resignation of Sarah Stewart, former commissioner of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, according to a Feb. 9 article by InDepthNH. This was in response to Stewart’s failure to inform Ayotte of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inquiry about the Merrimack warehouse. Following a Feb. 12 U.S. Senate committee hearing, U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons claimed DHS had been working with Ayotte, according to a Feb. 12 article by InDepthNH. The article adds that Ayotte has rebuked Lyons’ statement, claiming she was unaware of the plan until it was released by the ACLU-NH right-to-know request.
What we see in this situation continues to play out both at home in N.H. and on the national level: The gross incompetence of our government leaders. It has been amateur hour in the federal and state governments, and none of these fascists are capable of following through with their plans without pointing fingers like children on the playground who just got in trouble. According to a WBUR article that was reposted by New Hampshire Public Radio, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has called on Ayotte to “do everything in her power” to prevent the detention center in Merrimack from going forward.
I use the word fascist with the full weight of it; these MAGA Republicans in government are nothing more than brown shirts at the Munich Putsch. Having spoken with German historians and academics alike, they have had similar concerns about the openly fascist actions being taken by ICE. Disgustingly, Ayotte seems to be ambivalent about it and more interested in running cover for herself.
They couch their language around these “facilities” as well, saying Merrimack will be a “processing facility.” So was Dachau. What happens if it scales up? Do we have some moral obligation to wait until these ICE internment camps transition into concentration camps? This is what Ayotte is flirting with and what the DHS is proposing: Internment camps. Mass deportations were the Nazis’ approach when they started rounding Jews, communists and socialists up. Then it evolved into the labor camps, then the extermination camps. Why are we New Hampshirites even letting them court the idea of creating this internment camp in Merrimack?
Some may say it is hyperbolic to suggest those comparisons of the camps, but it is simple to me. I will sleep much better being hyperbolic and wrong than correct, because if I am correct, then I was not hyperbolic enough. Ayotte needs to be a one-term governor; anyone who openly supports this in the N.H. government needs to be voted out in the fall and anyone who openly supports this needs to be treated as the social pariah they are.
Timothy Fitzpatrick can be contacted at
