The Guardian view on the US immigration crackdown: what began with foreign nationals won't end there
While running for president, Donald Trump promised voters 'the largest deportation operation in American history'. Now he wants to deliver. Thousands of undocumented migrants have been rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials since he returned to the White House. On Monday, the US supreme court lifted a judge's ban on deporting alleged gang members to Venezuela under an 18th-century law, though it said deportees had a right to judicial review. Even the Trump-backing podcaster Joe Rogan has described as 'horrific' the removal of an asylum seeker – identified as a criminal because he had tattoos – under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
What's truly new is that the administration is also targeting those who arrived and remained in the US with official approval, such as the Palestinian activist and student Mahmoud Khalil. Normally, green card holders would be stripped of their status if convicted of a crime; he has not even been accused of one. But Mr Trump had pledged to deport international students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests that his administration has deemed antisemitic, and Mr Khalil was a leading figure in the movement at Columbia University. The president crowed that his arrest last month was 'the first of many'. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish student at Tufts, was detained by masked agents in the street, reportedly for an opinion piece she co-wrote with other students. Unrelated to the protests, dozens if not hundreds more students have had visas revoked, often for minor or non-criminal offences.
This crackdown is exploiting legislation in ways that were never intended. The Alien Enemies Act was previously invoked only in wartime – but Mr Trump casts mass migration as an 'invasion'. Mr Khalil and others are targeted under a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows deportations when the secretary of state determines that a foreign national's presence 'would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States'. And while this campaign is indiscriminate in many regards, Mr Trump's offer of asylum to white Afrikaners facing 'unjust racial discrimination' in South Africa speaks volumes about who is and is not wanted in his America.
The current fear among migrants, with all its social costs, is not a byproduct of this drive, but the desired result. The Trump administration is trying to push undocumented individuals into 'self-deporting', which is cheaper and easier than using agents to hunt people down. It reportedly plans to levy fines of up to $998 a day if those under deportation orders do not leave – applying the penalties retroactively for up to five years. Fairness, never mind mercy, is not relevant. The administration admits an 'administrative error' led to the expulsion to El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia – who is married to a US citizen and was working legally in the US – but fights against righting that wrong.
This crackdown should frighten US nationals too, both for what it says about their nation's character and for what it may mean for their own rights. The Trump administration wants to remove birthright citizenship and is ramping up denaturalisation efforts. 'I love it,' said Mr Trump, when asked about El Salvador's offer to jail US citizens in its infamous mega-prisons – though at least he conceded that he might have to check the law first. The chilling effect of Mr Khalil's arrest on dissent is already being felt by US nationals too: the first amendment's protection of free speech is not exclusive to citizens.
'The friendless alien has indeed been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment; but the citizen will soon follow,' Thomas Jefferson wrote when the alien and sedition laws were passed. That warning now looks more prescient than ever.
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