It’s not about immigration
I keep seeing news articles with headlines that adopt the administration’s framing and misdescribe the protests in LA and elsewhere as a response to the “immigration crackdown,” or similar words. The Trump administration is using “immigration enforcement” as a cloak, a code, a wedge to crack open the foundations of our democracy and replace it with an autocracy where dissent itself is a crime. The protests are about the abuse of power, the use of military-style force to threaten and terrorize civilian populations, the effort to suspend fundamental Constitutional rights, and the assault on our democracy by our government.
Have you ever been at your waitressing job at a popular Italian restaurant when twenty masked, heavily armed federal agents in tactical gear surrounded and entered the restaurant where you work, pushed your boss against the wall, handcuffed you and everyone around you, and set off flash-bang grenades? After the “raid” on Buona Forchetta, staff members—U.S. citizens who had done nothing but go to work—were reportedly crying and shaking. This doesn’t look like law enforcement. It looks like a military assault.
We have seen ICE arrests of foreign students on valid student visas, where the students thought they were being kidnapped. We have seen the deportation of men to the CECOT prison in El Salvador without charges, without due process, in violation of court orders, their abuse filmed as part of a high end video. We have seen a US citizen present a real ID and still be taken into custody while his co-workers shouted that he was a U.S. citizen. And then there are the children, the US citizens, who are being deported with their undocumented parents.
The Trump administration is harming not only the undocumented immigrants it is ostensibly pursuing, but everyone around them. And it is not focused on criminals—according to a Washington Examiner article, Stephen Miller reportedly chastised ICE leaders for saying they were going after criminals, asking “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” It is creating fear and safety issues in communities: those communities protest and the administration calls it “rebellion,” “insurrection” and sends in the National Guard and the Marines, without clear legal authority and over the objection of the state government and local leaders, to quell the mostly peaceful protests that the administration itself provoked. Then the administration calls for the arrest of those state and local leaders, and the protests—against deploying the military against civilian populations in U.S. cities, against threats to arrest Democratic leaders of their states and communities, against claims that they are investigating the suspension of habeas corpus and due process—are described as protests of immigration crackdowns.
No.
The protests are about the administration’s assault on civilians, elected leaders, Constitutional rights and democracy. Call it what it is.