Cruelty to Meet Quotas
The administration continues to show its ideological stripes.
Via Reuters: As Trump misses deportation goals, ICE pushes migrants to give up their cases.
Their case illustrates how U.S. President Donald Trump’s vast immigration crackdown is increasingly relying on threats to separate families and other aggressive tactics to pressure people into accepting deportation – even if they have submitted legal claims that in previous administrations would have allowed them to stay in the country, according to immigrants, attorneys, current and former officials and court records reviewed by Reuters.
These tactics include threats of jail sentences for resisting a deportation order or crossing the border illegally – crimes that previously were rarely prosecuted and would lead to separation from children – as well as prolonged detention with no opportunity to seek release and deportation to far-flung third countries, Reuters found.
Reuters spoke to 16 immigration attorneys, who collectively have hundreds of clients, and others with broad visibility into the Trump administration’s rising use of harsh tactics to force immigrants to accept deportations.
White House border czar Tom Homan defended the Trump administration’s approach.
“We’re using every tool in the toolbox,” Homan told Reuters in an interview. “Everything we’re doing is legal.”
The legal things being done include threatening to separate parents from their children, because, obviously, the most important thing here in a hierarchy of moral goods is deportations now, deportations tomorrow, and deportations forever.
Immigration advocates and other critics say the Vargases and others with potentially legitimate claims to stay in the United States are caught in what amounts to a numbers game. The Trump administration has said it aims to deport 1 million people per year, but is likely to fall short of that goal, given current trends.
DHS said in early December that Trump had deported more than 593,000 people since taking office, putting it on pace for fewer than 700,000 deportations by the year’s end.
As a general matter, it is morally problematic to use cruelty to meet quotas.
By the way, it does appear that the government is increasingly concentrating persons in various camps across the country by unleashing masked thugs on the populace. I wonder if there is a term for that?
Speaking of cruelty as policy, via Time, ‘I Was at the Finish Line’: People Are Being Turned Away From Their Citizenship Ceremonies in Trump’s New Immigration Crackdown.
Jane was one month away from her naturalization ceremony, the day she would swear the Oath of Allegiance to the United States and become a citizen. It would mark the end of her decade-long journey as an immigrant since arriving from the Republic of Congo in 2015.
Then, out of the blue, she received a letter in the mail informing her that the ceremony had been cancelled.
“I followed the rules, paid the full fee, waited years, passed every step; I was at the finish line pretty much,” Jane, who is using a pseudonym to protect her identity because she fears speaking out could affect her case, tells TIME. “Having my ceremony canceled at the last minute makes me feel anxious, powerless.”
This is just cruelly pulling the rug out from under someone who did it “the right way.”
These cancellations, at the last stage of a bureaucratic journey that can last for years, have caused chaos and confusion for thousands of immigrants who did everything by the book.
The cancellations stem from sweeping new restrictions on legal immigration introduced by President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the killing of a National Guardsman in Washington, D.C., particularly targeting immigrants hailing from the 19 countries listed in a June White House proclamation that imposed new travel and visa restrictions on countries “of concern.”
And then there is this story from the AP: Trump administration separates thousands of migrant families in the US.
If anyone wants to note that our immigration system needs a major overhaul, they will get no argument from me. But I simply cannot accept that the solution is to find the cruelest avenues within the current system. It is simply an immoral route.
Further, all of this continues to underscore a profoundly ugly nativist, anti-foreigner, and inhuman ideology at the heart of this administration.
I far prefer the notion of America and a “shining city on a hill” that accepts the “tired, [the] poor, [the huddled masses] yearning to breathe free.”
Or if the moral and the poetic are not persuasive enough, we could use the consumers, taxpayers, and laborers, given the fact that the non-immigrant population is not reproducing at replacement levels.
Plus, I like a mix of food, music, and culture to help enhance what we’ve already got.
I dunno, some idealism mixed with some economic truths mixed in with a new ethnic restaurant sure sounds better than racism, nativism, and cruelty to me!
And to top it all off, history is on my side of the argument.
The only right way is the white way.
Has the $50,000 bribe that Tommy took ever been accounted for?
This can’t be effective at advancing their goals politically. They want to be seen as cruel. To do this publicly. They think that’s effective.
This seems to be a push to get as much accomplished in as short a time as possible before the situation changes and shuts them down. That’s what it looks like to me. If you thought you had a political coalition that was enduring, you would take your time with this and avoid stuff that would get people more riled up.
Though to be fair, they also think acting swiftly lets them get more done before opposition can form and get going.
Nevertheless, I see this as the kind of thing that will turn countless Mexican-Americans, who are by nature fairly religious and conservative, against the Republican party. Just like Pete Wilson did in California in the 90’s and oughts.
I mean, there are some white people who don’t like this, too, and will probably stay home for an election or two. But they have a lot less skin in the game, if you’ll forgive me for that.
Months ago, Tom “I prefer my bribes in a paper bag” Homan was asked about taking children from their parents at the border. He feigned confusion, and then said immigrant parents could take their children with them – back to where they came from. Therefore the government was not breaking up families, it was immigrants CHOOSING that separation. Homan is a corrupt, soulless POS, which is why Lord Trump and President Miller like him so much.
I don’t mean to pick nits with your post and I’ll give you “inhumane,” but “nativist” is far too generous a label for describing what this administration is about.
At his “rally” earlier this week, Trump said:
That’s just pure, uncut white supremacy. And it is important to note that Trump deemed it important to deny it when he was caught saying these things behind closed doors during his first administration, while now it is a laugh line during a public address. By re-electing Trump in 2024, his voters not only determined for us all that criminality wasn’t qualifying in a POTUS, but neither was basic human decency. Trump has taken the permission given him and he is running with it.
I fear most of this damage is irreversible.
I wonder when the wingnuts will claim Rome fell when they let immigrants in.
In 376 CE, Goth hordes displaced by the Huns sought to be allowed entry in to the Easter Roman Empire. this was approved by emperor Valens, but provincial governors instead decided to abuse and shake down the refugees.
This led to a Goth revolt, joined by others in the region, and culminated in the Battle of Adrianople. The Romans suffered a great defeat there. The Goths stayed, and for inscrutable, unknowable reasons, they never assimilated into Roman society and its ways (them barbarian foreigners be crazy).
The Western Empire fell not quite 80 years later.
There’s no direct line between the two. A lot more happened in those decades, including the Huns featuring Attila. But even if there were, the issue was the corruption and greed of the provincial governors, not the Goths seeking refuge.
@Kathy:
The Goth/Roman divide had a lot to do with the variants of Christianity.
The Romans were orthodox/catholic “Nicene creed” Trinitarians, the Goths were Arians (as distinct to being Aryans, lol).
The two did not get on well, to put it mildly, as both considered the other party damnable heretics.
In addition, the Goths adhered to Gothic Law, the “Romans” to Roman Law.
It took centuries to blend them into a common legal code; for a long while in the interim different ethnic groups in the former Western Empire used diffrent laws.
Also, the Goths seem often to have defualted to their assumption that as “foederates” they were entitled to a right to levy tribute on settled populations, as they had been accustomed to do in their former lands.
Which naturally pissed off the provincial Roman authorities, who thought if anyone had a right to extort the peasants it was them, dammit.
@Kathy:
Actually, I’ve encountered some right-wing loons who DO assert Rome fell because of lack of control of migration.
And, silly as they are, there is sort of a case in that regard BUT … its complicated. lol
More that if you have coherent armed tribes invading, you have a rather serious problem regarding military capabilities.
The amusing thing if you point out to them that the migrants concerned were mostly Germanic and often Christian (depending on the tribe/nation concerned: Goths and Vandals were Christians; Franks and Saxons pagans) they tend to have a brain short-circuit.
I might point out, that similar applies to some on the “left” who posit ME/NA populations as somehow essentially “non-white”, which would have caused most Romans to raise their eyebrows.
@JohnSF:
The big irony is that Rome’s modern descendants, Italians, were not considered white until fairly recently. Nor were they real Christians, but Papists.
But Germanic tribes brought them down?
Hilarious
@Scott F.:
The really ironic thing being most Scandinavians, and other Europeans, now look at the US and say: nope.
My family came close to moving to the US in the late 1970’s: my father had a very good job offer from Chrysler, who he’d been working for, when they pulled out of the UK in 1978.
(I still sometimes muse about possible alternative life-histories, had things gone other than they did.)
Some might move: Silicon Valley, New York, L.A., all have obvious reasons for attracting people still.
But the US is not now as alluring to many as it used to be.
@Kathy:
Italians, were not considered white until fairly recently.
Ah, but that’s also very much an American (also possibly recent British, at times?) pov.
As I’ve mentioned before, European and American racial/ethnic defintions are often rather divergent.
I suspect it has relation to the American historical distinction of “white” vs “black” = “free” vs “slave” by some sort of essential nature.
Therfore Americans tended to a “racial” hierarchy with WASP’s on top, and various inferior types below.
Nothing else made sense, given their priors.
The old European default was “Christians” vs “non-Christians”.
With the issue being: who qualifies as genuinely Christian?
Hence one aspect of European history: Arian vs Nicene, Roman vs Orthodox, Catholic vs Protestant, Anglican vs Dissenter.
And I say “European” but that’s also misleading: for much of the earlier periods , the heartlands of Christendom were in Asia Minor (aka Turkey), Syria, Egypt, North Africa.
An Italian from the 700’s would likely have considered a “European” vs “non European” distinction rather absurd.
@JohnSF:
What many fail to keep in mind is the past is a foreign country. Sometimes more like an alien planet, or a distorted mirror. And this is especially tragic when people try to impose the morality of antiquated aliens on modern times and people.
@Kathy:
Indeed.
The current US MAGA attempt to cosplay Crusaders would be hilarious if it wasn’t so absurd, and potentially dangerous.
Much of the MAGA mindset seems based on a version of European/Christian history that is entirely ignorant of actual context, and maps more to US racial politics and related rather idosyncratic Baptist fundamentalism than to anything else.
I might say that this also applies to some US “progressives”, at times.
Categorizing Arabs as “non-white” and Israelis as “white” is an American default that leads on to contextualising them in American terms, which are misleading.
But MAGA in particular have an enormous problem about seeing anything outside their priors.
See their categorization of many European conservative Christian Democrats (the clue is in the name) as “atheist socialist globalists” yadda yadda.
Then we have their silly attempt to map European late-Mediaeval/Protestant concepts onto modern society, and define that as a “Christian Republic”.
Not to mention the tech-bros anarcho-liberalism.
The whole mess gives me a headache.