Trump misgoverns and creates an immigration crisis for political purposes

Maribel Hastings

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:

Last weekend, Donald Trump, aboard the presidential limousine The Beast, attended the Daytona 500 and led the drivers in two ceremonial laps around the track as part of the reality show that is his presidency. The laps resemble the vicious circle that is his immigration policy, where the intention is not to resolve the problem but rather to create it while mounting a spectacle of cruelty for his followers.

The media is reporting that Trump is furious because the detention and deportation numbers are not as high as he wants. This confirms, on the one hand, that he neither has the resources nor the personnel necessary to conduct mass operations and, on the other hand, that the undocumented immigrant “invasion” that Trump proclaims does not exist.

USA Today reported that Trump wants some 6,000 agents from the investigation division of DHS to focus on deportations, instead of investigating human and drug trafficking and potential terrorists. Likewise, he wants the Treasury Department to designate 2,300 IRS agents who currently investigate fraud and tax evasion, to go after immigrants.

And while the Trump administration dismantles agencies, fires federal employees, and eliminates or shrinks vital domestic and international programs, the Senate is considering a budget that would dedicate $175 billion to the border and mass deportations, according to an Associated Press report.

Trump declared an “emergency” at the border because he is anxious to use the army to terrorize families and communities even more than he already has, at this point, by not respecting churches, hospitals, schools, and other “sensitive” locations while seeking to increase the number of people detained and deported.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the army from acting as civilian police. But Trump can’t wait to ignore it, justifying doing so by the supposed immigrant “invasion.”

To increase the tallies of detained and deported people, he is also widening his net to make immigrants with documents deportable, including TPS beneficiaries, like Venezuelans, and eliminating parole for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

If there is any doubt that Trump intends to generate chaos, recall that he eliminated programs implemented by the Democratic ex-president, Joe Biden, to lower the pressure and bring order to the border. For example, he eliminated the CBP One application that allows people seeking asylum to initiate the process virtually. Instead of having an orderly process, with regional offices in Latin America that he forced to close, Trump is seeking to generate images that show a lack of control, which he can exploit for political ends.

We can’t forget last year when he was a presidential candidate, Trump mandated the killing of a bipartisan bill that would have conceded all of the Republican demands on matters of border security, because solving the problem would remove his stalking horse: exploiting the border issue for electoral reasons.

Another of his immediate actions was reestablishing the “Remain in Mexico” policy that he implemented in 2019. It requires people seeking asylum who are not Mexican to remain in the neighboring country until their application is processed. This public policy worsened the situation at the border line since thousands of migrants, from individuals to entire families, were sleeping outside in inhumane conditions due to the lack of shelters. Many were victims of crime, upon being at the mercy of drug and human traffickers.

He also eliminated parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, which, upon permitting U.S. citizens to sponsor nationals from those countries who meet certain requirements, avoided the desperation that caused them to cross irregularly, putting pressure on the border.

More evidence? Trump’s Department of Justice dismisses twenty immigration judges when there is a backlog of 3.7 million cases to be processed. Those delays also add pressure to the border when, out of desperation or necessity, they cause many migrants to try to arrive in the United States however they can.

It’s that Trump “grows” in the chaos that he provokes on purpose, to maintain a narrative and justify actions like indiscriminate detentions and deportations that are not focused only on people with criminal records, but on immigrants who have been established in the United States for decades and who are collateral damage of the lack of immigration reform, and the thirst for attention of the megalomaniac who misgoverns the United States.