Trump's war on immigration is also a war on American democracy and equality
For far too long, Democrats have let MAGA run amok unchallenged, as the right uses the supposed threat of immigration to sabotage the emergence of true multi-racial democracy in the United States
This piece was previously published at The Hot Screen.
While reasonable disagreement could once exist among Democrats as to how vigorously the party should oppose President Trump’s extremist immigration policies, that time has passed. The last six months have clarified that ceding this issue to President Trump as an area of unassailable strength has deeply endangered our democracy and open society. Crucially, in its words and deeds, the Trump administration has demonstrated that it sees no sharp lines among efforts to control the border, to terrorize the undocumented, to punish its political enemies, and to enforce white supremacism on the nation. Restricting “immigration” has opened the door to restricting democracy itself.
But as dire as this omnibus threat may be, the Trump administration has also wiped away any plausible deniability as to either its motivations or its goals. By illuminating the links between an underlying ideology of racial supremacy and the real-world enactment of lawlessness, authoritarianism, and violence, they have provided an opening for MAGA’s opponents to take square aim at both the moral rot and un-American actions of the Trump presidency. Unsparing pushback by defenders of U.S. democracy and freedoms could not be more urgent.
Rather than concentrate on securing the border and deporting criminal aliens, the Trump administration has unleashed a massive deportation effort against undocumented, law-abiding immigrants. Even acknowledging that MAGA claims of upwards of 20 million undocumented immigrants are wildly exaggerated, it now appears that the administration is determine to expel many millions, including those who have made their lives here for decades — tearing apart communities, wrecking families, and threatening the long-term health of the American economy by casting aside people who contribute as both workers and consumers.
It would be bad enough if these expulsions were happening in some impossibly antiseptic way. But as we’ve seen over the past half year, the White House has encouraged ICE authorities to act with maximal brutality, so that they inflict terror on immigrant communities: the offenses include beatings, ripping mothers away from children, the masking of ICE agents as if they were a secret police force, and the deployment of military-grade weaponry against unarmed civilians. We are also beginning to see reports of those who have died during round-up operations or while incarcerated. These actions come after years of propaganda from the president and his allies that not only sought to dehumanize immigrants, but to portray them as actual violent invaders of our nation. Mass expulsions are the logical conclusion of mass dehumanization and mass slander.
The recently-passed One Big Beautiful Bill has clarified the sadistic intentions of Trump’s policy: by massively expanding the number of detention facilities while barely increasing the number of immigration judges, the clear plan is to detain thousands upon thousand of immigrants in a state of limbo due to massively under-resourced processing capacity. This unnecessary, indefinite mass incarceration of overwhelmingly Latino immigrants would be an immoral and racist abomination; absent massive political resistance, it would signal the U.S.’s descent into collective degradation, a nation that had lost its collective conscience and capacity to preserve basic human rights, in favor of wanton repression of the vulnerable.
And as we’ll discuss more below, the Trump administration has also swiftly moved from targeting the undocumented to those whose documentation should never be in doubt: actual American citizens. In its eagerness to start de-naturalizing citizens, and to eliminate birthright citizenship, the White House could not be clearer that its war on immigration is indistinguishable from its war on certain Americans who do not fit MAGA’s racist notions of belonging. Indeed, in the name of “protecting” the country from immigrants, the Trump administration is attempting to give itself cover for a far more ominous project: to significantly rid the country of non-white inhabitants and citizens.
While such a horrific goal still seems impracticable, it no longer appears totally impossible, either. But even if the Trump administration is unable to denaturalize non-white citizens in great numbers, or is largely foiled by the courts in its fight against birthright citizenship, the effect of its multi-front war on immigration, and the accompanying war on citizenship, would nonetheless be profound. The Trump White House is doing all it can to reinforce a hierarchy of racial power that puts whites on top, and puts everyone else on notice that their citizenship is provisional, their status lesser, and their presence unwanted.
The motives behind this are hardly hidden. The far-right Great Replacement theory, which holds that a conspiracy of Jews and others of a cosmopolitan bent have been working to replace the populations of Europe and the U.S. with dark-skinned foreigners, has gone mainstream in the Republican Party. It can certainly be seen as a justification for Trump’s brutal moves against non-white immigrants in America. And the Great Replacement theory overlaps significantly with the U.S.’s centuries-long burden of white supremacism, and ultimately it is as an expression of home-grown white supremacism that Democrats and other opponents of MAGA should view the Trump administration’s immigration policies. From this perspective, we can see how calling them “immigration policies” actually badly understates the scope of the Trump’s administration’s ambition and ill intent —and why the Democrats have little choice but to directly engage policies that would drag the country backwards into a far more racially stratified and undemocratic society.
While many Democratic politicians believed they could somehow back down on the “immigration issue” while fighting Trump on what they see as more advantageous ground (such as protecting Medicaid and Social Security), this was always based on a fundamental misapprehension of the vastness of MAGA’s aggression. Immigration in the age of Trump has never just been about how many people to allow into the country each year, or about how to manage those who have crossed the border illicitly; it has always been central to an existential struggle over whether the United States should be a multi-racial democracy, or a country in which a diminishing white majority holds disproportionate power. Trump may be the enabler of staggeringly backwards policies, but he is acting on behalf of conservative white voters unable to cope with a diversifying America or the egalitarian democracy it encourages.
The Trump administration’s use of immigration as cover to go after MAGA’s political enemies should in itself be sufficient to motivate Democratic elected officials to re-think prior efforts to avoid confrontation. After a handful of protests against ICE in Los Angeles included acts of violence, Trump moved to radically escalate federal conflict with city and state authorities by nationalizing California National Guard troops and deploying U.S. Marines to support ICE operations. Alongside this, the president endorsed the idea of arresting Governor Gavin Newsom, even as federal security officers manhandled California Senator Alex Padilla and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spoke of the need to liberate Los Angeles from its illegitimate socialist rulers. Little of this should have been a surprise to Democrats; after all, Trump has long fantasized about authorizing troops to shoot protestors, and close advisors have openly salivated about finding excuses to invoke the Insurrection Act in Democratic states and cities. And in a demonstration of how white supremacist intent is intertwined with anti-immigrant animus and attacks on democracy, Trump and his allies have shown particular spite in seeking confrontation with L.A’s African-American mayor, Karen Bass, and in handcuffing Latino Senator Padilla (among other absurdities, Noem claimed not to have recognized him when he attempted to ask her questions at a press conference). The (barely) underlying message: non-white elected officials are especially tainted by illegitimacy and are undeserving of respect; by extension, the same applies to those who chose to elect them.
Closely linked with this is a more general use of immigration issues to take aim at the rights of ordinary Americans, beyond their ability to vote for the leaders they want. Trump used the existence of limited violence by protestors in California to deploy troops who might quash not just those who threw rocks, but to intimidate the far larger numbers who limited their actions to words, signs, and passive resistance. To Trump, there is no such thing as legitimate opposition to his administration, and the arena of immigration is seen as essential ground for making this point.
We’ve also seen how a denial of immigrants’ rights leads directly to a denial of citizens’ rights. After all, as many have by now pointed out, if the government can deport anyone by simply claiming they’re an alien criminal, then no American is safe from such treatment, either; the government has perfect cover for disappearing overseas any citizen it finds objectionable, and then claiming it simply made a mistake in asserting the citizen was an undocumented person. A parallel erosion of rights is visible on a daily basis, as ICE agents question, rough up, and arrest American citizens who they deem to look or behave like undocumented immigrants. The idea that any American should be asked to provide proof of citizenship by governmental authorities or risk arrest is a deeply offensive one, certainly at odds with our being a free people. Add in the obvious racial dimension as to which Americans are being asked these questions and treated like criminals, and we see again how the anti-immigrant purge is inextricable from a resurgent white supremacist impulse emanating from the Oval Office.
Perhaps the most direct link between attacks on immigrants and the diminishment of citizenship rights is in how the administration is considering denaturalizing immigrants who became American citizens, as well as eliminating birthright citizenship. As others have discussed in detail, the idea that citizenship for naturalized citizens is contingent on the relative goodwill of whatever administration is in power would create a two-tiered system of belonging in the U.S. Anyone in the naturalized camp would be constrained in their political activities and basic rights, lest they attract the retributive attentions of Trump or a like nativist successor. And Trump has already indicated that denaturalization would be a political weapon, for instance suggesting that New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani should face deportation. Again, too, the white supremacist underpinnings, up to and including the previously unimaginable racial purging of the nation, haunt every mention and future deployment of denaturalization.
Revocation of birthright citizenship would vastly multiply this threat — even as the overturning of plain Constitutional language would send earthquakes through what remains of the rule of law in our country.
In the midst of Trump’s doubling and tripling down on a repressive, racist vision of America that demonizes immigrants in order to destroy political enemies and restore white supremacy, polling is starting to show that the president is in fact acting against the sentiments of most Americans. A Gallup poll released last week found that 79% of American adults say that immigration is “generally a good thing,” while only 17% view it as bad. Meanwhile, only 21% of independents and 16% of Democrats want less immigration; and while some 48% of Republicans want less immigration, this is an astonishing 40% decline over the last year. Strikingly, the poll also finds that current support for immigration as a good thing reverses a downward trend in the 2021-24 period.
These are hardly the sort of numbers you’d expect to see if President Trump were embodying the “will of the people” in his immigration policy. In fact, these suggest the president is badly out of synch with the opinions of most Americans on the fundamental question of whether immigrants are a boon or a threat to the nation. If common sense, basic morality, and a belief in fundamental freedoms weren’t already enough, such polls should stiffen the spines of those Democrats still reluctant to engage in unremitting political combat for the future of the United States. They are promising signs that the public is fundamentally skeptical of MAGA’s radical efforts to redefine citizenship and Americanness.
Democrats should also recognize the deep significance of how Trump and MAGA continue to escalate their attacks on immigrants, on citizenship, and on our basic freedoms even in light of such obvious public signs towards moderation and inclusion. Rather than reflecting some fundamental nativist shift in American attitudes, the Republican Party is dedicated to a white nationalist agenda in defiance of mass public opinion. In doing so, it may be serving the interests of a diminishing, right-wing white minority, but it does so in open opposition to the interests of the American majority.
It has long been questionable whether Donald Trump ever had any sort of insuperable “advantage” on immigration. While this may have made some sense around the narrow ideas of public trust in his ability to secure the border (“build a wall” is hard to beat as a no-nonsense, if authoritarian, solution) and to crack down on violent criminals — areas where the Democrats’ internationalism and adherence to due process might make them look relatively weaker — it never made much sense when you grasped that we were never just talking about narrow questions of immigration. When Donald Trump heaved down that golden escalator so many years ago and declared war on immigrants, we can see now that these were opening salvos not simply in a battle over the border, but over the demography and even destiny of the United States, very much including the composition of its citizenry and the nature of our democracy. Not only were immigrants from Latin America (and to a lesser extent, Asia and Africa) seen by many on the right as directly feeding the transition to an America where whites will not much longer be a majority, but bashing undocumented immigrants was also a way to conduct a proxy war on demographic changes among the citizenry itself while seeking to smear that evolution with illegality and illegitimacy.
Today, as we see how Trump’s anti-immigrant hatred has blossomed into an overt project of racial purification and dominance, MAGA’s position on “immigration” has been shorn of its pretenses. Trump and his allies are themselves barely bothering to pretend that we’re talking about border security and actual criminals anymore. Now, all the undocumented are to be deported for a common criminality — whether you’re a dishwasher, a nanny, a manager of vineyards, or the father of three U.S. Marines, you have committed a great crime against America by. . . simply existing.
But even this widening of the net is not enough for MAGA. Not only is the Trump administration planning to revoke the citizenship of those they deem unworthy through denaturalization, they are aiming straight for the constitutionally protected right of birthright citizenship, betting that a Supreme Court majority sympathetic to their retrograde views will bless a negation of the plain language of the 14th Amendment. And in far less than a coincidence, Vice President J.D. Vance has spoken repeatedly of the United States as a nation of blood and soil, where those who have been here longest are held to be the truest Americans, and where newcomers should expect to be treated as second-class. This is a full-court press to re-define what it means to be American, and thus, what America itself means. What Republicans are engaged in, under the pretense of reforming “immigration,” is no less than a war on the United States as a country in which all citizens are equal and free, where even immigrants have basic rights, and where the purported advantages of one’s ancestry are nothing next to the rule of law and a fundamental egalitarianism.
So when Democrats duck full engagement on immigration issues, broadly defined, they evade participation in this fundamental debate about the nature of our country, leaving the field open to MAGA racism, lies, and pseudo-intellectual self-justification. Overt white supremacism, blatant cruelty, and direct attacks on American citizenship are only impregnable Trump strengths for Democratic elected officials who have lost touch with the basic identity, aspirations, and greatness of the United States. It should have been obvious years ago that the party had lost the thread of the immigration fight, allowing Trump and MAGA to short-circuit open discussions about America’s evolving demography by declining to confront the noxious white supremacist ideas hovering just below the surface of the demonization of newcomers. Misled by polls that too often conflated concerns about border security and criminality with Americans’ opinions about a pathway to citizenship for law-abiding, long-term undocumented residents, Democrats fought the battles that Trump preferred to fight, rather than promoting an honest and grounded discussion about American identity that the country badly needed.
The constellation of issues signified by “immigration” and Americans’ attitudes towards them — national identity, social status, equality versus hierarchy — are hardly static, and Trump’s brutality and nativism have laid the groundwork for a backlash. But it will not be enough to try to make Trump and MAGA look crazy and cruel in their treatment of immigrants; Democrats need to consciously advocate for an inclusive and welcoming national identity against MAGA’s rancid, exclusionary white supremacism.