Trump's De-legalization

 

Donald Trump wasted little time exploiting the shooting of two National Guard troops to advance his lawless assault on immigrants and refugees, pledging on Thanksgiving Day to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries” and expedite the removal of people his administration doesn’t see as “a net asset” to the United States.

The president announced his proposal in a series of unhinged, racism-laced posts on his social media platform a day after two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot in Washington, DC. The suspect was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who worked with CIA-backed military units in Afghanistan and was granted asylum earlier this year by the Trump administration.

Trump ignored that fact in his Truth Social tirade, blaming his predecessor for Lakanwal’s presence in the US and using the shooting to broadly smear migrants and refugees.

“These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process,” Trump wrote. “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for—You won’t be here for long!”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, highlighted Trump’s “outrageous claim” that most of the immigrant population in the US is “on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”

“As insulting as the ‘deplorables’ comment, and on Thanksgiving Day no less,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “This rhetoric is indistinguishable from the stuff you hear coming out of white nationalists. Completely identical language.”

How Trump’s rant will be translated into policy is unclear. Reuters reported Thursday that Trump “has ordered a widespread review of asylum cases approved under former President Joe Biden’s administration and Green Cards issued to citizens of 19 countries.”

Like the president, his administration did not provide a specific list of nations, but it pointed Reuters to “a travel ban Trump imposed in June on citizens of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Laos, Togo, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, and Turkmenistan.”

Trump’s posts came days after US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced plans to reinterview hundreds of thousands of refugees admitted into the country under former President Joe Biden.

The advocacy group Refugees International condemned the move as “a vindictive, harmful, and wasteful attack on people throughout US communities who have fled persecution and cleared some of the most rigorous security checks in the world.”

“The decision retraumatizes families, undermines faith in the legal immigration system, disrupts integration, and misuses taxpayer dollars to scrutinize valuable new members of American communities,” the group added. “This is part of the Trump administration’s unprecedented de-legalization of people who arrived on humanitarian pathways and erodes the US as a nation of refuge.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams