Photograph Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – Public Domain
The Trump administration’s deportation of people without anything resembling due process has disgusted much of the population. The latest target was a two-year-old girl who apparently is a US citizen. As with many of the other people slated for deportation, she doesn’t seem to fit the description of the dangerous criminals who Trump claimed are terrorizing the country.
While clearly Trump has no issue with gratuitous cruelty and ignoring laws, the deportation drive actually stems from a basic problem created by his campaign. Trump repeatedly complained that Biden had allowed millions (sometimes it was tens of millions) of dangerous criminals into the country. A large share of his supporters actually believes this.
After creating a real fear about vicious criminal immigrants in much of the country, Trump has to be seen taking big steps to bring the problem under control. This is where Trump’s lie runs into problems with reality. There are relatively few serious criminals among the people who have come into the country in recent years — and insofar as any are identified, they were likely already in the deportation process under Biden.
This leaves Trump desperate to drive up numbers and then trying to make the case after the fact that they have actually deported dangerous criminals. This explains the craziness around Ábrego García’s deportation, where they are making allegations in the media about him being a gang kingpin when they know they would never have been able to make this case in court. Undoubtedly, the same is true of many of the others they sent to serve indeterminate sentences in a hellhole prison in El Salvador.
The key point here is that Trump needs to maintain the illusion that he is deporting large numbers of dangerous migrants. The fact these people don’t exist means that Trump has no choice but to make a big scene out of deporting people who may have committed no crime whatsoever. And he is apparently prepared to violate the law to maintain the show.
This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.
