America the Fortress

The Atlantic

15 hours ago

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Past leaders have imagined the United States as a 'shining city upon a hill,' a melting pot, a ' beacon to the world.' Donald Trump is working toward a different vision: the United States as a fortress.
Late Wednesday, the White House announced a new version of the travel bans that it had imposed during Trump's first term, barring people from 12 countries—Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—from coming to the U.S., and restricting entry from seven others: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. (The ban has some exceptions.) Shortly after, he issued a proclamation that bars foreign nationals from entering the country to attend Harvard University—though not other universities, for reasons that are not satisfactorily explained but seem to boil down to Trump's animus toward the school. A judge promptly issued a temporary block on the new rule. (Trump had made the move after she temporarily blocked his previous attempt to prohibit Harvard from enrolling foreign students.)
The new travel ban is, if you're keeping score, Trump's fifth, and the widest ranging. The first came on January 27, 2017. In line with his campaign promise to prevent Muslims from entering the United States, it barred entry to people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days; suspended refugee admission for 120 days; indefinitely blocked refugees from Syria; and lowered the overall annual cap on refugees.
When a federal judge temporarily blocked the order, Trump replaced it with a somewhat narrower one, again running for 90 days, which covered the same countries minus Iraq. Federal courts initially blocked the core parts of that order too, though the Supreme Court allowed it to mostly go forward. Trump issued additional bans in fall 2017 and January 2020, with various changes to the countries covered. Joe Biden rescinded the bans on January 20, 2021.
In a video about the new ban, Trump cited 'the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,' and said: 'We don't want them.'
That message is loud and clear—even to those who aren't formally banned. Horror stories about foreign nationals visiting the U.S. have begun to circulate: Two German teens claimed that they were detained, strip-searched, and deported from Hawaii (U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied their account and alleged that they had entered the country under false pretenses); an Australian ex–police officer said she was locked up while trying to visit her American husband; New Zealand's biggest newspaper ran an article in which an anonymous 'travel industry staffer' encouraged Kiwis not to visit the United States.
These anecdotes could exact a cost. The World Travel & Tourism Council, an industry trade group, released a report last month forecasting a $12.5 billion decline in tourist spending in the United States this year. That is not the product of global factors: Out of 184 countries the group studied, the U.S. is the only one expected to see a drop. Other forecasts see a smaller but still huge decline, though so far the data show a major decline only in travel to the U.S. from Canada.
The Trump administration's reputation as a host has taken a hit in other ways too. A visit to the White House was once a desirable prize for any foreign leader; now even allies are approaching them with trepidation. After the president ambushed Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa in Oval Office meetings—showing a racist and misleading clip, in the latter case—German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reportedly prepared for yesterday's meeting by seeking tips from other world leaders on how to handle Trump. (The encounter was still bumpy at times.)
This hostility to foreigners of all sorts is neither an accident nor collateral damage. It's the policy. Trump's xenophobia is long-standing and well documented, but some of his aides have developed this into more than just a reflex of disgust. Vice President J. D. Vance has championed ideas aligned with the 'Great Replacement' theory that Democrats are trying to dilute the existing demographic and cultural mix of the United States with immigrants. 'America is not just an idea,' he said last July. 'It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future.' Stephen Miller and the Project 2025 crew, each of whom exerts a great deal of influence over Trump's policies, have pushed not just for stopping illegal immigration and deporting migrants but also for limiting legal immigration.
The rare exception that Trump and his aides allow helps make the implied racism in these ideas explicit. The administration has moved to dramatically reduce refugee admissions, but last month, it welcomed a few dozen white Afrikaners from South Africa, whom the White House claims were victims of racial discrimination at home.
The administration even seems eager to discourage people from leaving the country. Green-card holders are being arrested and detained while reentering the U.S.; immigration lawyers say the safest course for legal permanent residents is to stay in the country. Trump has also repeatedly expressed a desire to weaken the dollar, which would make it more expensive for Americans to vacation overseas.
North Korea is frequently described as a hermit kingdom for its willingness to wall itself off from the rest of the world. Trump has expressed his admiration for and personal bond with Kim Jong Un before, but now he seems eager to emulate Kim's seclusion too.
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P.S.
In other immigration news, ABC News broke the story this afternoon that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident and Salvadoran citizen whom the Trump administration deported to a Salvadoran Gulag, has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges. The Justice Department acknowledged in court that Abrego Garcia's removal was an 'administrative error,' as my colleague Nick Miroff reported, before resorting to ever more absurd claims that he was a member of the gang MS-13. Now Abrego Garcia has been indicted for alleged involvement in a scheme to traffic migrants within the United States.
I have no idea if these charges are true; the indictment is relatively brief, and the administration's earlier desperation to pin charges on him is worrying. (The investigation that led to the criminal charges reportedly began only after his removal.) Nevertheless, if the government believes that he committed these crimes, he should be tried in court with due process. As I wrote in April, 'If the people who are getting arrested are really the cold-blooded criminals the executive branch insists they are, saying so in a court of law should be relatively easy.' Now the administration will have a chance to do that, and Abrego Garcia will have a chance to defend himself.
— David