From Matt Yglesias’ January 20 Slow Boring, Blame Trump for Trump-era immigration excesses:
“Trump’s surge in enforcement has been accompanied by large-scale racial profiling that’s been blessed by Trump’s appointees on the Supreme Court. They are deliberately surging resources into places controlled by their political opponents rather than places where state and local officials are asking for additional immigration enforcement. They have told ICE personnel that they should cover their faces and wear fatigues rather than maintain the normal appearance of police officers in a democratic society. The Department of Homeland Security’s social media accounts keep winking at white nationalist memes. In Minneapolis, along with detaining illegal immigrants, they are deliberately arresting Somali-born legal residents and trying to come up with pretexts to strip them of refugee status. And of course, when an officer killed an anti-ICE activist after repeatedly violating protocol and after his colleagues needlessly escalated the situation, the Trump administration responded by characterizing the dead woman as a domestic terrorist.”
All of this is terrible. And all of it is Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s doing (with help from the Supreme Court).
And now ICE has committed yet another brutal, inexcusable murder. R.I.P. Alex Pretti, ICU nurse and model American citizen. None of this would be happening if we had decent, moral leadership and if ICE was operating in a lawful manner (and perhaps operating in states where there are many more illegal immigrants, rather than ones the petulant president likes to goad). And the reprehensible lying about what is transpiring – sickening. As the New York Times Editorial Board said today, “The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power.” I am sad and fear for my country.
