Trump’s cruel family separation policy is the latest insult in his bigoted agenda
It is long past time to recognize that demonization, stoking racism, and the cruel and unconscionable treatment of Latinos and other targeted communities IS his agenda.
By Janet Murguía, President and CEO, UnidosUS
The Trump administration’s new policy of forcibly separating parents from children at the border — even babies and toddlers — has generated understandable and appropriate outrage from all corners. Despite Trump’s cowardly and absurd attempt to pin the blame for this on Democrats, this unspeakably cruel initiative is all his. In fact, this kind of policy has been Trump’s plan all along.
As volatile and erratic as Trump has been in so many other areas, he has been a model of consistency when it comes to immigrants. First, he has consistently and without exception painted all immigrants as criminals. It was the opening salvo of his campaign when he infamously called Mexicans “rapists” and “drug dealers.”
Every single time he has talked about immigration — as a candidate and as president — he has gone through a litany of crimes allegedly perpetrated by “illegal immigrants.” Conversely, he has yet to say in any of these speeches one positive thing about immigrants and what they contribute daily to this country. So, despite mountains of evidence and America’s 242 years of experience, in Trump’s mind, immigrants and immigration are “bad” for this country.
That is why in his battle with reality on the issue, Trump has latched on to the notorious MS-13 gang. Not content with simply saying that immigrants are criminals because they crossed the border, he is now attempting to paint all 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country as a group of hardened and vicious criminals terrorizing the country.
Again, no one, least of all those in the Latino community who are the actual victims of MS-13’s heinous acts, is defending or condoning gangs. What we are pushing back on is this broad-brush defamation of hardworking, peaceful, and family-oriented people, something the president is purposefully doing and continues to do. Just last week, the president, in yet another publicity stunt meeting on MS-13 in Long Island, said that unaccompanied minors are “not that innocent.”
Add that to the thousands of documented lies the president has told in the first year and a half of his presidency. While it is true that older unaccompanied minors are at greater risk for gang recruitment, let’s look at the numbers.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 5,000 people were arrested on suspicion of gang ties between 2011 and 2017. Of those, 159 were unaccompanied minors and 56 were eventually found to have reasonable suspicion of gang ties.
By contrast, 250,000 unaccompanied minors were detained by CBP during that same time period. In other words, Trump slammed all unaccompanied minors today as “not so innocent” because .0002% of them could be tied to gangs. Talk about your fake news.
The president has now slid from just the criminalization of immigrants to dehumanizing them. His tripling down on calling gang members “animals” recently is just the latest example.
Dehumanizing language about communities of color is as Trumpian as gold-plated buildings. In 1989, he called the Central Park Five animals who should get the death penalty, no matter than they turned out to be innocent. In 2015, he called two Black men accused of killing two police officers “deranged animals.”
Yet he has never applied the term to anyone other than a minority. So, Mr. President, why is Stephen Paddock, the man who used an automatic rifle to massacre 57 people who were in an open field with no means of escape in Las Vegas, not an animal?
Why is James Fields, who deliberately plowed a speeding car into a group of marchers, killing one in Charlottesville, not an animal?
Why is Dylann Roof, who was welcomed into a Black church and then murdered nine people, not an animal?
I have a couple of ideas. One, because the president wants to make his rhetoric and policies specifically targeting communities seem anything other than discriminatory, aberrant, and cruel.
It is lot easier for some to tolerate parents being separated from their children at the border if they are seen as less than human. It is a lot easier for some to object to Black people protesting police shootings if they are seen as “animals.”
And two, frankly, because the president is a bigot. If his entire history in public life does not convince you that he is, just look at what the Washington Post reported last week:
“The night before Trump delivered his first speech to Congress in February 2017, he huddled with Jared Kushner and Miller in the Oval Office to talk immigration. The president reluctantly agreed with suggestions he strike a gentler tone on immigration in the speech.
Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he was at a rally, he then read aloud a few made up Hispanic names [emphasis added] and described potential crimes they could have committed, like rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.”
Hilarious.
The most benign view of this anecdote is that Trump is willing to stoke abject racism to keep his supporters entertained. But given not only his rhetoric but his appointments and policies, that excuse or any other excuse does not wash.
It is long past time to recognize that demonization, stoking racism, and the cruel and unconscionable treatment of Latinos and other targeted communities IS his agenda.
We are under attack but we are not powerless. We have weapons — our voice and our vote. And what we must do with those weapons is to ensure that the vast majority of Americans who are appalled not only by the separation of families but also by these attacks on families, communities, and our democracy, unite to fight back.
