Sadism over Substance
The goal is not mass deportations, per se. At best, mass deportations are secondary. The primary goal is to terrorize people for the pleasure of the MAGA base and to help Trump break what is left of America’s constitutional order.
Otherwise, why is the current administration deporting fewer people on a monthly basis than Obama, Biden, and Bush did?
Why is the head of the Department of Homeland Security posing in front of a maximum security prison where some innocent people got sent because they were Venezuelan and had tattoos?
Why did the White House post an ASMR video of a deportation flight on its twitter page? Why is there a Ghiblified photo of a crying woman getting deported by ICE?
The infrastructure is there to keep deportations up at a stable rate while ratcheting things up to deport millions of people. The detention centers are ready. We all know that this administration has little to no regard for human welfare, especially if the humans in question have darker skin. So overcrowding should not be a concern for them.
It’s possible their objectives changed once enough of the Trump administration realized just how much work deporting millions of people would actually be.
I honestly don’t know.
But maybe this shift does signal something else.
The Case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Abrego Garcia is a man who fled gang violence in El Salvador at age 16. Despite the Kafkaesque system called our asylum process, he did everything correctly. He is married with a special needs child and is a sheet metal worker. He pays his taxes, is a union member, and is a productive member of society.Yet ICE under Trump still targeted him as a member of the street gang MS-13—all because of the word of a confidential informant who made this claim during a bond hearing, his national origin, and the fact he had a tattoo commemorating his son. ICE recently admitted that it was not supposed to deport him, and a federal judge ordered his deportation to be halted as well.
However, the Supreme Court says that ICE doesn’t have to do anything to get him back from the hellhole the poor man is trapped in. Though now the Supreme Court says that this man must be returned, something Trump and the leader of El Salvador have defied.
The Trump administration has repeated the claim that he is a gang member of MS-13. Considering how truthful this administration has been in the past, I simply cannot trust a word it says about this man.
Instead, I see a hardworking immigrant who made the decision to create a better life for himself, or, to be more accurate, he fought and clawed his way to America because he would die otherwise. I see a man who embodies masculine virtues of grit, honor, and reliability, traits that MAGA followers claim they venerate. Someone who married an American citizen. Who made the decision to stick around and help raise his special needs son. Someone who pays his taxes and is a good family man.
Most of all, he was here legally. All of his paperwork was in order.
Yet he still got wrongfully deported to a hellhole prison in El Salvador.
I am sure many of you will not be surprised that the Trump administration will do nothing to help this man.
Sadly, my prediction that people who are here legally or are American citizens would get caught in the crossfire has come true.
If anything, I was too optimistic. Legal residents and American citizens are now targets of this new administration.
Cruelty Is the Policy
Pursuing certain policy goals can be messy and dirty, especially when dealing with high-stakes issues.Sometimes, you are dealing with situations where there are no good options.
But what the Trump administration is doing is fundamentally different.
Cruelty is the policy.
They are prioritizing making a spectacle of deportation over large numbers of deportations. The following are possibilities.
Maybe DOGE has accidentally weakened ICE with its carelessness. Maybe undocumented people are taking steps not to get deported by hiding or not showing up to work. Perhaps the Trump administration is not that interested in the logistical and operational sides of things, or some in the Trump administration feel they need large amounts of prep work before the mass deportations. Or maybe some semi-sane people in the Trump administration realize just how important undocumented immigrants are to the nation’s economy and are sabotaging plans to implement mass deportations.
Either way, I figured that mass deportations would take precedence over tariffs considering how the majority of the American public is in favor of mass deportations and opposed to tariffs.
I still take seriously the threat to immigrants all over this country. ICE is out in force. An innocent man was wrongfully deported and sent to a mega prison in El Salvador, and ICE continues to make arrests that are legally questionable at best.
It has just surprised me that Trump’s per month deportations are lower than President Biden’s, Obama’s, and Bush’s.
But now I understand the goal is to destroy opposition, terrorize scapegoats and weaken checks on Trump’s power. Deportations are at best a secondary goal.
Why Mass Deportations Are a Bad Idea
The inescapable fact, inadvertently confirmed by farmers in California who voted for Trump but cannot afford the mass deportations of their labor force, is that so much of the American economy is dependent on immigrant labor, especially undocumented labor.We are already seeing the price of groceries go up. Deporting much of the agricultural workforce would cause grocery prices to go up even faster. That is, if it doesn’t cause outright shortages of certain foods.
As many of you know, there was a sharp increase in egg prices because the bird flu killed millions of egg-laying chickens around the country. In fact, a grocery store near where I live had to ration eggs.
Getting rid of most of those workers would cause egg prices to soar even higher and most likely cause more egg rationing.
Agriculture is not the only sector that is highly dependent on undocumented labor.
If you want to help bring food prices down, mass deportations are the worst thing you can do (along with tariffs on our allies).
Construction, tourism, and health care are all heavily reliant on undocumented labor. All three sectors are already short-staffed as it is. They cannot afford to lose any more people.
The same thing goes for other sectors of the American economy.
Is relying on a class of people you can pay below minimum wage and can deport on a whim ethical? No.
However, it is still more ethical than relying on prison or child labor.
The point is that undocumented people are not enslaved, like some have hyperbolically suggested, just highly exploited.
Along with my overall dislike of how much the immigration system is a convoluted mess and my broad understanding of how essential immigrants of all types are to the American system, this is why I am strongly opposed to mass deportations as a policy and why I am pro-immigration as a general rule.
But more important than anything else, mass deportations are unnecessarily cruel. These policies needlessly break up families who are solid contributors to American society, and for what?
I support deporting people under fairly specific circumstances.
For example, I would have supported the deportation of Charles “Lucky” Luciano to Sicily after World War II, along with other members of his crime syndicate who would have been eligible for deportation. Same for others convicted of serious crimes or sedition.
So I am comfortable with deporting confirmed members of MS-13.
But that is not what the Trump administration is doing.
What they are doing is disappearing and terrorizing people solely for the benefit of a base who delights in hurting people for its own sake and even worse, doing permanent damage to America’s political fabric so Trump can increase his own power.
It is sadism and lust for power over substance.