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Public furor is hard to maintain. It takes a concerted effort from people who have a lot to lose. Not only do they not have anything to gain (financially or otherwise) from engaging in protests, but they face the real possibility of arrests, job losses, beatings, or actual death.
On the other hand, the Trump administration has nothing to lose. It’s not only playing with house money, but it’s infested with racist psychopaths willing to sacrifice an entire nation and its constitutional ideals if that means it might be able to forcibly eject anyone who looks a bit Mexican.
The “worst of the worst” claim made to justify ICE’s violent, unconstitutional tactics was always a dodge. Even before Trump took office for the first time, the data showed migrants committed criminal acts at rates much lower than US citizens. Racists then tried to claim that throwing Black people out of the data would show migrants crossing the border from the south would prove them right. It didn’t, even when those studying the data decided to meet racists halfway and factor in race, rather than citizenship.
In recent weeks, the administration has managed to get somewhat close to the arrest quotas set by resident ghoul Stephen Miller and new ICE boss Markwayne Mullin. What hasn’t changed are the facts: the people being arrested, detained indefinitely, denied access to their civil rights, and summarily ejected to whatever hellhole wants cash in exchange for new government violence victims simply are not criminals, especially not of the violent variety.
This report from the New York Times breaks down the numbers. We’ll start with this chart, which shows the violent crime rates have remained consistent throughout Trump’s second White House residency. The only thing that has changed is how many people are being swept up by ICE’s roving kidnapping squads.
That nearly-flat line at the bottom is the violent crime rate. Everything else is the escalation of the Trump administration, which continues to pretend it’s the best at hunting down migrant criminals.
The Trump administration is deliberately wrong about the migrant crime rate. The DHS social media feeds are filled with narratives about arresting individuals who have committed serious crimes, but it’s the most extreme form of cherry-picking. For every social media blast about some person ICE has picked up and deported, thousands of arrests of people who are, in most cases, either trying their best to follow the legal path to residency or have lived here for years, if not decades, and done nothing more than work their asses off in hopes of securing the American Dream.
What’s worse is that ICE is back to generating negative press on a daily basis due to its proclivity for engaging in excessive force. But this indirect pressure isn’t working. Neither are the multiple efforts being made around the nation to disrupt opportunistic arrests by ICE officers. The administration has the upper hand.
Overall, immigration arrests rose to record highs with 43,000 ICE arrests in June and 49,000 in July. Two fatal shootings involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, in Texas and Maine, drew outrage but did not meaningfully slow the pace of arrests.
Unofficially (lest it be accused of setting quotas), Trump wants 2,000 arrests per day. The inhumane ghoul currently d/b/a White House advisor, Stephen Miller, has been calling for 3,000 arrests since day one of Trump’s second administration.
The numbers are getting up there, and even a number of murders committed by immigration officers hasn’t managed to slow this down. Neither has the lack of evidence of criminal activity by the people arrested, detained, denied rights, and deported by the Trump administration.
What’s been happening since Trump took office for a second time is a decimation of the US workforce and the ejection of people who pay more taxes and use fewer social services than US citizens. And that’s before you factor in the violent crime rate, which is far lower than the numbers generated by people Trump pretends he’s trying to protect by authorizing opportunistic raids of any place day laborers might be found.
This administration pretends it’s the last hope for law and order, even though it routinely violates laws and disrupts public order. The GOP party made political hay for years by pretending Democrats would bankrupt America financially, if not morally. But while ICE officers kill people and get away with it, Trump’s party has managed to run up a $40 trillion tab, taking us past the watershed mark of the national GDP.
Meanwhile — as the NYT report points out — the administration is leveraging its relationships with red state politicians to juice its arrest stats. The largest increases in arrests in July occurred in Florida, Wyoming, Texas, and Arizona. Blue states saw a drop but only because ICE finds it much easier to engage in bigoted enforcement in states that are run by MAGA-loving bigots.
There’s nothing in this effort that even slightly suggests Trump’s mass deportation efforts have anything to do with making this country safer. It’s always been about making this country whiter and more supportive of whatever Nazi-esque efforts Trump 2.0 decides to pursue next.
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