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Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Only Empowers The Police State
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As mass arrests begin nationwide as part of an immigration crackdown, it serves as a boon for the centralization of authority into the hands of an even more corrupt government and the monopoly on violence which protects it.
It has begun. Last week the Trump administration initiated a nationwide campaign of migrant roundups and mass deportations allegedly targeting illegal immigrants. The crackdown, a coordinated effort across multiple federal agencies and spanning several states included the reauthorization of raids in previously prohibited protected areas including schools, churches, and hospitals. The operation is touted as “targeting criminal aliens”.
On his first day in office, president Trump signed a slew of executive orders targeting immigration, many of which were illegal and outright unconstitutional, among them attempting to target the 14th amendment of the constitution of the United States which enshrines birthright citizenship into law, slated to go into effect February 19th and impact the lives of over 150,000 children.
Some of Trump’s orders say the quiet part out loud, showing that the intent is not to target illegal immigration, but immigrants in general. This blatantly xenophobic approach is most clearly illustrated by the targeting of asylum seekers. Hours after his inauguration, Trump signed an order canceling long-planned asylum appointments which left thousands of migrants, all of whom were patiently undergoing the process of lawfully entering the country through standard legal immigration procedures, stranded on the U.S.-Mexico border. One would think that if president Trump wants to curb illegal immigration that streamlining the process for legal immigration would be the logical step. Instead, ironically, Trump’s attack against legal asylum seekers only increases the likelihood of illegal immigration.
On the same day Trump would also sign an order declaring an emergency on the southern border, capitalizing on the patently false rhetoric of equating immigration with an “invasion”, as a means of attempting to expand the use of the military domestically.
On this issue Trump follows in the footsteps of his predecessors before him by broadly expanding the use of the word “emergency” well beyond its given definition in order to justify tyrannical power grabs for an “emergency” which is otherwise non existent.
As George Mason law professor Ilya Somin writes for Reason magazine —
An emergency is a sudden, unexpected crisis, not an ongoing policy issue on which the president wants to redirect resources in ways not authorized by Congress:
If the president can declare an emergency and tap a vast range of special emergency powers anytime he wants for any reason he wants, that makes a hash of the whole concept of an emergency, raises serious constitutional problems, and creates a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a single person.
It makes much more sense to interpret the National Emergencies Act as only allowing an emergency declaration in a situation where an emergency actually exists – defined as some sudden crisis that cannot be addressed swiftly enough through ordinary political processes. By that interpretation, the situation at the border doesn’t even come close to qualifying.
There is no sudden crisis at the border right now. In fact illegal entries are down to their lowest level since August 2020, when the rate was unusually low due to the Covid pandemic. What remains is an ongoing policy issue, on which there is longstanding disagreement. In my view, the best way to address it is to make legal immigration easier. But those who disagree cannot get around using ordinary legislative processes by invoking an “emergency.”
The impact of the immigration raids has already sent shockwaves through communities nationwide, occurring in cities like Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California; Denver, Colorado; St. Paul, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; Buffalo, New York; Newark, New Jersey; Boston, Massachusetts, and Phoenix, Arizona; among others.
Concern has already began to grow regarding the scope of the mass arrests and how they impact the civil liberties of American citizens swept up in the wider net of police action as well as accusations of racial profiling.
During a raid on a place of business in Newark, New Jersey, ICE agents detained several individuals without a warrant including a US military veteran, according to WPVI ABC 6 news.
In a statement Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka said the military veteran “suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned.”
“This egregious act is in plain violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees ‘the right of the people be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the mayor said. “Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized.”
A Puerto Rican U.S. citizen was also detained during the raid.
In the southwest US, first nations people of the Navajo Nation have been met with racial profiling and discrimination. In the first few days of the operation already, at least 15 Navajo people, also known as Diné people, have been stopped and detained with reports of officers refusing to recognize tribal identification as valid proof of citizenship, prompting responses from tribal elders Native News Online reports.
Diné peoples are encouraged to carry with them Certificates of Indian Blood (CIB) and state issued IDs to identify themselves, reflecting advice from the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) as concern and uncertainty grow throughout many communities.
Amid the flurry of mass arrests, NBC News has indicated that nearly half of those detained in some cases are nonviolent offenders or otherwise have no criminal record in what Trump administration border czar Tom Homan refers to as “collateral arrests”. Adding that these will “likely recur” as immigration enforcement actions escalate across the nation. Exemplifying a blatant and callous disregard for the rights of innocent people targeted by authorities.
The politicization and polarized nature of the arrests highlights a glaring inconsistency among Americans attitudes towards excessive policing within the context of the fake left versus right dichotomy.
In 2020, when Trump’s Department of Homeland Security began conducting gestapo style snatch and grabs of American citizens amid Black Lives Matter protests following the police murder of George Floyd, the left decried it and the right cheered.
When the federal government was politically weaponized under the Biden administration and used to round up hundreds of innocent non-violent protesters along with the violent provocateurs of the January 6th riots at the Capitol building the right decried it and the left cheered it.
During the height of covid tyranny when the jack booted thugs of the police state were enforcing lockdowns, raiding church services and family gatherings, stopping random pedestrians and demanding to “see their papers”, once again the right decried it and the left cheered it
And once more, now that federal agents are rounding up and detaining people in droves, demanding to see their papers in blatant violations of the Fourth Amendment yet again, the right cheers it and the left decries it.
This flippant back and forth is a prime exemplification of the moral bankruptcy and complete disregard for logical consistency within the pitfalls of us versus them tribalism.
These recent actions are just the latest in a long series of escalations stretching back years of scapegoating the immigration issue to expand state power.
As The Free Thought Project previously reported, over the last several decades the so-called “immigration crisis” has been the convenient pretext used to turn the border region of America even nearly 50 miles inland into the textbook example of what it is to live under a police state; complete with highway checkpoints, airport checkpoints, roving and stationary border checkpoints, warrantless searches and ever increasing illegal mass surveillance with a total disregard for the constitution, human rights, or civil liberties.
Trump has called for the expansion of these powers on numerous occasions, with the once self styled “anti-establishment renegade opposing the deep state” turned shameless statist stooge even calling upon his once derided CIA to step up domestic spying operations, in addition to using the manufactured border crisis to advance the agenda of implementing a biometric digital surveillance panopticon.
The militarization of the border also comes amid the declaration by president Trump to designate cartels as terrorist organizations, prompting the deployment of over 1500 troops to the southern border. However we would be remiss not to point out that these are the very same drug cartels that have been historically backed by the CIA, armed by the ATF, and trained by US Special Forces, which the government has knowingly assisted to traffic drugs into the United States with the specific intent of targeting marginalized communities with the express intention of creating a drug war as a means of criminalizing the antiwar and black liberation movements.
If the designation against the cartels stands it would essentially be just another entity in the long list of terrorist organizations that has had covert backing by the United States government throughout its sordid history of creating their own enemies.
All in all, these policies will do little to quell the problem of drug trafficking and use. Trump, being the businessman that he is, knows full well the economic value of supply and demand, as well as the impact of cause and effect. If the Trump Administration actually wanted to hit cartels where it hurts the most, in the wallet, and effectively bring their operations to a screeching halt they should instead be launching a massive drug decriminalization campaign to end the prohibition on controlled substances.
As research has shown that decriminalization and legalization along with increased treatment for those suffering from addiction, as well as addressing the socio-economic factors that drive people to addiction in the first place is the most effective way of actually combating the disease and the criminal operations that enable it.
As was the case with Portugal, who decriminalized all drugs at the turn of the millennium as heroin use and overdoses skyrocketed in the late 90s. Their shift from the drug war to a healthcare based approach has seen over 20 years of steadily declining drug usage and overall overdose deaths. As NPR reports —
Portugal’s leaders responded by pivoting away from the U.S. drug war model, which prioritized narcotics seizures, arrests and lengthy prison sentences for drug offenders.
Instead, Portugal focused scarce public dollars on health care, drug treatment, job training and housing. The system, integrated into the country’s taxpayer-funded national health care system, is free and relatively easy to navigate.
“Someone who has problematic drug use isn’t someone who is a criminal or someone who has a moral failing,” Moniz said, describing Portugal’s official view of addiction.”
They’re someone who has a health problem, a physical or a mental health problem,” he said. “That’s a tremendous societal shift.”
Many U.S. drug policy experts who’ve studied the Portugal model say it’s clear parts of it worked far better than the tough-on-crime philosophy embraced by U.S.
“I think they showed that when you make [addiction treatment] services extremely available to people who are struggling with problems of drugs, you get a lot of good outcomes,” said Dr. Keith Humphreys, an addiction expert at Stanford University.
Indeed, similar steps have already been taken in the United States, but with mixed results. In 2020, Oregon took the radical step of decriminalizing personal use amounts of drugs, which initially saved thousands of lives in the first year. But two years later with the public health disaster that was pandemic lockdown policies and mismanagement by state officials, Portland ultimately failed where Portugal succeeded. Not as a result of decriminalization itself, but because of its governments own ineffectiveness of providing critical health care and social services.
However, elsewhere decriminalization proves itself to be incredibly effective at targeting the very areas that Trump and his cohorts claim they want to address. As The Free Thought Project has reported ad nauseam, a plethora of evidence shows a reduction of hard drug usage and overdose deaths in areas where marijuana has been legalized. Furthermore, the overall legalization of marijuana has in recent years had a profound impact at hampering the bottom line of cartels, while simultaneously leading to an overall reduction in crime in places where its legal.
The American drug war has played a profound role at facilitating illegal immigration at the southern border, as the prohibition on controlled substances serves as a financial incentive for cartels in Latin American countries to create a supply for the demand and to wage violent conflicts with one another to control their monopoly, thus leading to higher crime rates in countries such as El Salvador and Honduras resulting in the influx of migrants fleeing its disastrous consequences.
Ending the war on drugs once and for all would be one of the most effective strategies towards curbing the immigration crisis by depriving cartels of revenue and reducing the gang violence associated with it both here and abroad. But so long as the cartel that is the US federal government and their cronies in big pharma, the military industrial complex, and the prison industrial complex profit from prohibition, and are able to use the consequences of their drug war as a pretext to further consolidate power and control the crisis will only continue to worsen at Americans expense.
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