Immigration as an excuse for autocracy

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Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:

The militarization of immigration policy is in full swing, and the Trump administration has announced that it is speeding up construction of the largest detention center in the United States, logically on a military base, Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas.

Although the facility will not be completed until 2027, media reports say it will begin receiving immigrants immediately. It is expected to house 1,000 immigrants initially, with 250 beds added each week until it reaches its maximum capacity of 5,000.

Most of those detained and deported by Trump are not criminals. Of the nearly 57,000 immigrants currently detained by ICE, 71% have no criminal record, according to a report by TRAC.

But immigration is central to Trump’s strategy, exploiting the false narrative of “criminals” and “invaders” to justify all the abuses and excesses of his anti-immigrant crusade: arbitrary arrests by masked agents based on racial profiling, trampling due process, deportations to third countries, people disappearing from the system, and ignoring court orders, among many others.

Trump is using immigrants as guinea pigs to test the limits of his excesses, but his goals go beyond immigrants.

Gradually, the public is beginning to digest the magnitude of what is happening and, according to various polls, is rejecting Trump’s immigration policy of indiscriminate detentions and deportations. But the response has not yet risen to the level of the danger that threatens us.

While there is no doubt that the Trump administration is waging a race war against immigrants of color, it also includes communities of color, even if they are citizens, and its political and ideological “enemies.”

Every week, several developments raise alarm bells about the country’s situation, which is very dangerous because it erodes institutions, due process, and democracy itself.

For example, the firing of Labor Statistics Bureau Commissioner Erika McEntarfer for presenting a report based on data that Trump deemed “weak” and accused her of “manipulating” the figures.

And that’s not to mention the soap opera surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein case, where the imprisoned accomplice of the now-deceased convicted pedophile, Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted of sex trafficking, among other charges, was transferred to a minimum-security facility after it was revealed that documents from the high-profile case mention Trump, a friend of both.

For Trump, the Department of Justice is his law firm, which does not look out for the common good of Americans but rather for his interests.

All this is happening with no consequences for Trump, who has the Republican-controlled Congress and, to a large extent, the courts on his side, including the nation’s Supreme Court, which granted immunity to the president who is running free on his path to autocracy.

To solidify the Republican majority in Congress, Trump and his cronies in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott, are pushing a redistricting plan five years ahead of schedule and one year before the midterm elections to add up to five Republican seats at the expense of Democrats and voters of color.

This comes in the week that marks the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law on August 6, 1965, by a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, ironically a Texan.

Another of Trump’s targets is public radio and television, which he accuses of favoring liberals. Control of information is another component of the roadmap to autocracy.

The list of steps toward that autocracy is long and extremely worrying.

Further south, in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele secured the approval of a constitutional amendment that allows for indefinite re-election, extends the presidential term from five to six years, and eliminates the second round of elections.

This would be Trump’s golden dream, and at the rate we are going, don’t be surprised if he soon tries to emulate his buddy Bukele.

The original Spanish version is here.