Cruelty is the point

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Tariffs could soon tank our economy. The administration is flagrantly ignoring the Constitution and the courts. Donald Trump’s using the White House as a crypto hub to make billionaires richer looks for all the world like flat-out corruption. But what he’s doing to actual human beings, human beings who happen to be from other countries, is depraved.

At this point, the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father and legal resident, is well-known. He was deported to El Salvador without due process and locked in a prison so awful some have likened it to a gulag or concentration camp. The administration said his deportation was “an administrative error,” then claimed he was a member of the notorious gang MS-13. On April 10, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his release. So far Trump has not complied.

If that case wasn’t bad enough, read on. Imagine the situation a woman must find herself in to flee her home in Guatemala, manage to make it across the U.S. border, and be found wandering the Arizona desert. Alone. Oh, and she was eight months pregnant.

The 24-year woman, known only as Erika M., was arrested by the Department of Homeland Security in the desert between the Mexican border and Tucson, Arizona, after crossing illegally. Her explanation that she was fleeing a “violent situation” in Guatemala fell on deaf ears. She was fast-tracked for deportation under Trump’s new “expedited removal” policy. That was last Monday.

On Wednesday, she went into labor and was taken to a local Tucson hospital, where she gave birth to a six-pound baby girl. Federal agents were posted outside her hospital room and prevented a lawyer, Luis Campos, from meeting with her. To notify immigration authorities that she has an attorney, Erika M. needed to sign a form, which Campos had. The agents said he couldn’t meet with her because he wasn’t legally her attorney without the signed form. Is your head spinning yet?

Erika M. was released from the hospital on Friday without her newborn daughter and then detained by ICE. Things shifted on Saturday when protests sprang up and Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs heard about the case and intervened. A statement from her office said, “While she supports securing the border, Governor Hobbs has been clear in her opposition to inhumane immigration enforcement practices.”

Erika M. was then reunited with baby Emily and released from custody. She was able to meet with her lawyer, who is petitioning for asylum for the new mother. “She fled Guatemala under threat of death, hoping to seek asylum in the U.S.,” Campos said. The next step is a credible fear interview with an immigration judge.

Campos credits the governor and vocal public outrage with a change in his client’s status. “I would love to be able to say they (DHS) made the right choice based on humanitarian grounds, but it’s equally evident to me that they made this choice because they were forced to make this choice, based on public pressure,” he said.

Today, the Trump administration is offering $1,000 and a plane ticket home to any migrant who offers to “self-deport.” Trump’s other draconian immigration policies in the form of executive orders include: mass deportations, which have yet to happen; ending birthright citizenship, which is a constitutional right; denying due process, evident from the above examples; and declaring an “invasion” on the U.S.-Mexico border in order to suspend the ability of immigrants to seek asylum.

The ACLU is suing the Trump administration over several of these orders. The first is birthright citizenship. Three U.S. district courts have halted Trump’s case while the Supreme Court considers it this month.

A second lawsuit is challenging Trump’s false claims of an invasion to justify the denial of asylum protections expressly granted by Congress. “Trump’s action ignores protections put in place by Congress and backed by the courts for generations that ensure people have a chance to have their asylum claims heard,” the ACLU said in a statement.

All this evidence proves that the Trump administration has no regard for immigrants, whether here legally or not. It is not run-of-the-mill disregard; it is cruel and exhaustive. Why does Trump hate immigrants so much? It goes beyond “fixing the border” because it polls well.

The architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies is Stephen Miller, one of his most trusted advisers. He is a Trump-loving combination of loyal and extreme. Miller currently serves as deputy chief of staff but is angling to become national security adviser.

Trump discussed the possibility on Sunday aboard Air Force One. “I mean, I think he sort of, indirectly, already has that job because he has a lot to say about a lot of things,” Trump told reporters.

Defending the administration’s immigration policies seems to be Miller’s favorite pastime. He has accused “communist left-wing judges” of blocking several executive orders and derided Democrats for demanding due process.

Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House official, doesn’t mince words when describing Miller on a recent podcast. “He is a horrible human being. I think he is someone who has gone all in, down the rabbit hole, on extremism. And I think in his mind, there would be no migrants, immigrants, or any mixed race in our country.”

Yes, a majority of Amercans agree that some form of rational, humane immigration reform is needed. But not in vicious, vindictive, and unconstitutional ways.

What would our country be without immigrants? Except for the 2% of the population who are indigenous, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants. No matter when our ancestors came here, they were likely seeking a better life, escaping authoritarianism, or following a dream.

And it is a good thing they did. Immigrants built this country and are still integral to its success. From a purely economic standpoint, being anti-immigrant makes no sense. Immigrants participate in the workforce in higher percentages than U.S.-born citizens. Immigrants helm 55% of small businesses and startups.

Immigrants pay taxes and buy goods and services. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, they generated $1.6 trillion in economic activity in 2022. That same year, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes. More than a third of the taxes are payroll taxes for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. All of which they are barred from participating in.

Mass deportations would adversely affect the overall economy while decimating several sectors that rely heavily on immigrant labor — construction, agriculture, and the service industry — especially with an unemployment rate of just over 4%.

Trump’s claim that the U.S. has seen a “migrant crime wave” is false. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens, according to an analysis of crime data from 1980 to 2022 conducted by the American Immigration Council.

The president seems most proud of his hard-line anti-immigrant policies. Erika M. and Abrego Garcia are pawns in a sickening political game where the xenophobic players simply do not care that those pawns are people, with lives and families, who deserve due process. It goes against this country’s founding principles.

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