Are these the "working class" politics the center wanted?

January 18, 2024

It appears as of this writing that the Laken Riley Act will proceed to a final vote in its most egregious form. Even Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have submitted a memo suggesting that the cost of the LRA will simply be too high to bear and too unmanageable to implement. Democratic legislators have been all too eager to participate in Trump’s “mass deportation” plans, an idea that just mere months ago was cast as impending fascism and a threat to democracy. Where are those calls now?

Notably absent are responses from the so-called “centrists,” who have argued in the wake of the election that Democrats needed to embrace the mysterious specter of “working class” values, including limits on immigration. None have clarified whether the Laken Riley Act is that solution although Democratic politicians seem to believe it is. Joseph Stiglitz told Tyler Austin Harper of The Atlantic that “Democrats may need to compromise” on immigration. The same essay cites Daniel Chandler’s “Free and Equal”: “High levels of immigration can make it more difficult to create a stable sense of political community and national identity.” In the same publication, Cecilia Muñoz and Frank Sharry condemned “immigration rights groups” for moving Democrats too far to the left on the issue, calling for pragmatism, “control and compassion,” which includes “removing public safety threats” alongside “pathways to citizenship.”

These centrists argue they are calling for a common-sense reassertion of the U.S.A.’s border and sovereignty. It should mean something, they say, to be a citizen of this country. But what they don’t say is how a country decides who is deserving of that citizenship and how it decides who is not.

Donald Trump and MAGA are very clear on who does not deserve citizenship. Trump said immigrants (except the white ones) were “poisoning the blood of our country.” He has consistently posited that other countries are “not sending their best” people. Theo Wold of the Claremont Institute has called for “assimilation” and “Americanization.” He calls for a “closed border” to benefit the working class.

The intent behind the LRA plainly appeals to Steven Miller and the Claremont Institute, who want a world that looks like them. Not only have Democrats capitulated, admitting both defeat and a lack of principal, they are using the language of xenophobia to do it, in pretty much the same way that they have supported increased criminalization of everyone from children to the houseless. In California, law enforcement officers are “jubilant” now that a state run by Democrats has retreated from minimal reforms, reforms that eased the ever-expanding prison system’s iron grip on state funding. In Atlanta, a Department of Public Works bulldozer ran over and killed a person as the agency was clearing a homeless encampment.

States, sensing momentum now that mass deportations are finally within reach, also have rafts of proposed legislation and policies, rolled out by pioneering Republican politicians. A Mississippi district attorney proposed “bounty hunters” for immigrants, and Indiana and Florida want to ban undocumented children from public schools.

Except that it’s also Maury Healey, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, who wants to limit the number of immigrants in the shelter system. It’s Kathy Hochul, the Democratic governor of New York who wants to put a cop on every subway car.

Far from resisting, Democrats seem determined to facilitate “mass deportation.” And while the propaganda may be splashier than the results, we should all be concerned about condemning more people to banishment and punishment.

More immigration links and stories:

Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis. (“Biden actually increased border enforcement.”)

An ICE Detention Chief took a job at private prison company GEO.

The Wall Street Journal reported that there are plans for an ICE raid in Chicago on Tuesday, the day after Trump’s inauguration. This seems to be part of a push to target big cities.

Stephen Miller appears to have been working over the past few years to draft over two-dozen executive orders that the New York Times reports will be implemented (or attempted) as soon as Trump becomes president. They include attempts to end birthright citizenship, designating cartels “terrorist organizations,” and reinstating Title 42. When Miller was a junior staffer, “much of Washington’s establishment regarded Mr. Miller as a racist.” Oh.

In Nebraska, business owners are worried about mass deportations, and immigrant workers watch a TikTok that falsely says the government will offer $1000 for turning in immigrants.

This piece in Rolling Stone points out something I’ve been trying to emphasize: the role of propaganda in the “mass deportation” scheme. In the absence of money and personnel (and even with them), Trump’s team has been gearing up a massive amount of media propaganda both linking immigrants to criminality AND advertising “mass deportation” as a coming attraction inspiring both fear and awe (even though much of what Trump will do resembles Biden’s policy right now).

Two lists by two immigration experts on what may happen when Trump becomes president.

Immigrants in the United States are preparing for Trump by spending time with their families, making custody preparations, and bracing for the worst. “It’s moments like these that the faith in God that has kept us in this country for years begins to fade,” one said.