{"id":1493326,"date":"2024-02-10T11:17:36","date_gmt":"2024-02-10T11:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/02\/biden-immigration-bill-hypocrisy-trump\/"},"modified":"2024-02-10T11:21:56","modified_gmt":"2024-02-10T11:21:56","slug":"on-immigration-trumpism-is-now-democratic-common-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/10\/on-immigration-trumpism-is-now-democratic-common-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"On Immigration, Trumpism Is Now Democratic Common Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

The past week saw Democrats take up Trump\u2019s hard-right immigration policy as their own for campaign fodder, with the liberal press\u2019s assent. The very xenophobia that Democrats decried as \u201cfascism\u201d has become their policy agenda.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n US president Joe Biden speaks with US Customs and Border Protection officers as he visits the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023. (Jim Watson \/ AFP via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

There are two ways you could look at what happened on Capitol Hill this week, when Republicans voted down the hard-right border deal attached to the White House\u2019s military aid package for Ukraine and Israel.<\/p>\n

One is the way that most of the mainstream press, Democrats in Congress, and liberal commentariat have chosen to talk about it: as a textbook case of GOP irresponsibility and inability to govern. To be fair, there\u2019s certainly something to the absurdity of Republicans demanding that harsh border measures be put into the aid package as a condition of voting for it, getting exactly what they wanted, then immediately refusing to vote for it anyway because Donald Trump told them not to give the president a win.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also another, more depressing way to look at it: as a major victory for Republicans and immigration restrictionists more broadly, engineering a hard rightward lurch on the border by both Democrats and the liberal press, who have adopted not just the policies but the rhetoric<\/em> of what for eight years they\u2019ve been calling incipient fascism and white supremacy. If this holds, it will be a far bigger prize than any one single bill \u2014 and a much bigger deal than the usual Republican hypocrisy in Congress.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

An Anti-Immigration Nightmare<\/h2>\n \n

It\u2019s hard to overstate just how bad this bill was, resembling a Stephen Miller<\/a> policy wish list that combined extreme anti-immigration powers with massive funding for the country\u2019s growing deportation-industrial complex.<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s most far-reaching measure<\/a> would have been to further Trump\u2019s war on asylum, effectively shutting the country to even asylum seekers after a certain number of weekly border \u201cencounters\u201d had been reached, triggering what it calls \u201cBorder Emergency Authority,\u201d delivering on President Joe Biden\u2019s campaign vow<\/a> to \u201cshut down the border.\u201d It also made it harder to make asylum claims, whether or not it was a time of \u201cborder emergency,\u201d and sped up the process by which asylum seekers can be deported.<\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t all. The Intercept\u2019s <\/em>Ken Klippenstein found<\/a> a provision that gave the Department of Homeland Security secretary the power to unilaterally and summarily deport undocumented immigrants without review in times of border emergency. Another provision cut off<\/a> even further aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the embattled refugee aid agency that is more or less the only lifeline for Palestinians facing deliberately engineered disease and famine right now.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, it would have poured billions more money into enforcement, including $7.6 billion of extra \u201cemergency funding\u201d for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), close to<\/a> the agency\u2019s annual budget. The Washington <\/em>Post<\/em>\u2019s Nick Miroff warned<\/a> that the ICE funding for deportation and detention \u201ccould fund significant crackdown, esp on single adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little wonder, then, that the bill got the enthusiastic endorsement of anti-immigration enthusiasts. Both the acting head of the US border patrol and its Trump-endorsing, Biden-bashing union endorsed<\/a> the deal, while the Republican senator who helped negotiate it boasted<\/a> that had it already been law, \u201cnot only would the border would be shut down today it would have been shut every single day the last four months.\u201d The union\u2019s pro-Trump vice president, Art Del Cueto, was similarly effusive. \u201cUnder this bill, everyone is going to get detained,\u201d he gushed<\/a>. \u201cThe processes are more strict than they are now. . . . If they don\u2019t have a good asylum claim, they\u2019re going to get sent back immediately without ever getting released.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also little wonder that many on the other side of the issue harshly condemned the bill. Immigration advocates called it<\/a> a \u201cdisgrace\u201d and a testament to \u201cracism and heartlessness\u201d that amounted to<\/a> \u201cslamming the door in the face for those with valid asylum claims.\u201d House Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal charged<\/a> that Democrats were once again giving in to \u201cextremist views.\u201d<\/p>\n