It Was Never About 'Bad' Immigrants

Deportation flights to remove illegal aliens (DHS Photo by ICE/Released)

Trump's immigration policies were never about deporting criminal or "illegal" immigrants.

Trump would rid our nation of immigrants who didn't follow the rules, and "wait in line," many supporters argued, and he would focus first on criminal immigrants, who illegally crossed the border to steal our stuff and rape our women. Eleven days into the second Trump administration, those arguments were clearly a bunch of bunk.

Three examples prove my point.

First, Trump halted refugee resettlement, funding to NGOs engaged in refugee resettlement, and aid for refugees already settled in the U.S. These are immigrants who followed the rules. They "waited in line," and completed the stringent vetting process. Some of them already had flights booked that were promptly canceled on Inauguration Day.

Trump included more than 1,600 Afghans who helped US forces during the War in Afghanistan in this order. We made promises to them. Our betrayal will be remembered by potential allies.

Second, Trump promised during the campaign to revoke the legal status of Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio. After falsely claiming that these migrants were stealing the pets of their neighbors and eating them, Trump said regarding their visas, "Absolutely. I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country."

Again, these are immigrants who came here the "right way." They "waited in line," and went through the legal process. They are authorized to live and work here, and Trump says we need to deport them.

The third example is a really big indicator that Trump does not care about prioritizing criminal immigrants — Trump rescinded the directive to ICE stating they should prioritize criminal immigrants.

The Biden administration directed ICE to focus on the deportation of immigrants who threaten public safety. Contrary to Trump’s claims, no one in the immigration debate is arguing that criminals shouldn’t be deported. In fact, last year the Biden administration set a record high for the number of deportations since 2014. The crime rate among immigrants, both documented and undocumented, is lower than the crime rate for citizens. Therefore, for Trump to fulfill his campaign promise of mass deportation, he must de-prioritize the deportation of criminals. (Note: being in the US without authorization is not a criminal violation, it's a civil violation.)

Many voters likely supported Trump under the impression he would keep them safe from harm. But Trump's deportation agenda isn't really about keeping us safe. In fact, it's making us less safe by diverting law enforcement resources away from catching bad guys to catching immigrants.

So what's the deportation agenda really about? I would point again to this meme from the Trump campaign that I shared in a previous newsletter, where the answer to that question is ... not subtle.

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What Else We’re Reading

PsyPost: “Conservatives share more false claims in polarized settings, research reveals”

In polarized political environments, conservatives are more likely than liberals to share misinformation, driven by a heightened desire for their group to achieve dominance, according to new research from the University of California-Irvine. However, in less polarized settings, misinformation-sharing decreases significantly, and the ideological divide all but disappears. The research has been published in the Journal of Marketing.

…

“Our findings don’t suggest that conservatives are inherently prone to spreading misinformation,” the researchers told PsyPost. “Instead, it’s situational. Polarization and perceived group threats are the key factors driving this behavior, and these broader contexts are what need to be addressed.”

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“Polarization plays a big role in how misinformation spreads,” Zhu and Pechmann concluded. “Conservatives are more likely to share misinformation when they feel their group is under threat or in competition, such as during elections. However, if not in a polarized context, conservatives and liberals share misinformation at similar levels. Thus, to address misinformation, we need to focus on reducing polarization and the motivations behind it, not just correcting false information.”

Link.

PsyPost: “A nation exhausted: The neuroscience of why Americans are tuning out politics”

Over the past couple of years, though, I have noticed a change: Many of my patients say they either have tuned out or are too exhausted to do more than a brief read of political news or watch one hour of their favorite political show.

Research supports my clinical experience: A Pew research study from 2020 showed that 66% of Americans were worn out by political stress. Interestingly, those who are not following the news feel that same news fatigue at an even higher percentage of 73%. In 2023, 8 out of 10 Americans described U.S. politics with negative words like “divisive,” “corrupt,” “messy” and “polarized.”

In my view, three major factors have led Americans to exhaustion and burnout with U.S politics.

Link.

Pete Wehner: “Evangelicals Made a Bad Trade: Hitching the evangelical wagon to Donald Trump has meant unhitching it from the life and teachings of Jesus.”

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICALLY INTRIGUING is how bracing and electrifying a figure Trump is to many evangelicals. It is as if his disinhibitions have become theirs. Parents who disapproved of their children saying “damn” are now enthralled by a man who says “motherfucker.” Those who championed modesty and purity culture celebrate a thrice-married serial adulterer who made hush-money payments to a porn star. Churchgoers who can recite parts of the Sermon on the Mount are inspired by a man who, on the day he announced his candidacy for reelection, promised vengeance against his perceived enemies. Christians who for decades warned about moral relativism are now moral relativists; those who said a decent society has to stand for truth have embraced countless lies and conspiracy theories. People who rage at “woke cancel culture” delight in threats to shut down those with whom they disagree. Men and women who once stood for law and order have given their allegiance to a felon who issues pardons to rioters who have assaulted police officers.

Gift link.

Charlie Sykes: “MAGA's Cancel Culture Comes for a Meteorologist”

Some of you are perhaps old enough to remember when MAGA’s great cause was the fight against “cancel culture.” And, indeed, the great icons of the right continue to posture as free speech absolutists. “I feel liberated,” said a top banker after Trump’s victory. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.”

Ah, but the new dawn does not come for everyone. Consider what happened in my hometown last week. Talk radio host Dan O’Donnell called forth the flying monkeys to denounce a young television meteorologist who had posted criticism of Elon Musk.

Link.

David French: “How a German Thinker Explains MAGA Morality”

Over the last decade, I’ve watched many of my friends and neighbors make a remarkable transformation. They’ve gone from supporting Donald Trump in spite of his hatefulness to reveling in his aggression.

This isn’t a new observation. In fact, it’s so obvious as to verge on the banal. The far more interesting question is why. How is it that so many Americans seem to have abandoned any commitment to personal virtue — at least in their political lives — and have instead embraced merciless political combat so enthusiastically that they believe you’re immoral if you don’t join their crusade or even if you don’t mimic their methods?

It’s a question with a multifaceted answer. In December, I wrote a column examining the question through a specifically religious lens. When a person believes that he or she possesses eternal truth, there’s a temptation to believe that he or she is entitled to rule.

There’s a difference, however, between yielding to temptation and developing an alternative morality. And what we’ve been witnessing in the last decade is millions of Americans constructing a different moral superstructure. And while it is certainly notable and powerful in Trumpism, it is not exclusive to Trumpism.

Gift link.

Just Security: “Trump’s Dictatorial Theory of Presidential Power – What the Executive Orders, in the Aggregate, Tell Us”

In a flurry of executive orders and proclamations this past week, President Donald Trump took decisive action on a range of significant issues including border enforcement, energy policy, birthright citizenship, and the TikTok ban, among others. While those Executive Orders cover disparate policy domains and legal topics, they are united in their reliance on broad assertions of inherent presidential power. On issue after issue, Trump claims that the Constitution directly empowers him to take certain actions, without any authorization by Congress and in the face of contrary statutes.

The idea that the Constitution directly confers certain powers on the President is, by itself, neither new nor controversial. Yet in many of these orders, Trump is not simply asserting an inherent constitutional power to act. He is claiming a power to act in ways that clearly conflict with existing federal statutes. That is, he is asserting a constitutional prerogative to ignore, disregard, or even openly violate federal laws that are inconsistent with his policy agenda.

Link.