Op-Ed: We Should All Be More Concerned That Trump Keeps Threatening To Deport US Citizens

Black America Web

a day ago

Source: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / Getty
In an alternate version of America, where the chaos caused by an authoritarian government run by a bumbling idiot hadn't become so normalized, we're almost collectively numb to it, people would be far more concerned about a sitting president who has, multiple times, toyed around with the idea of deporting U.S. citizens.
On Tuesday, when President Donald Trump was talking to reporters outside of the new migrant detention center in Florida's Everglades, dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz,' he was asked a simple question about how many detention facilities he would need to carry out his mass deportation agenda. As usual, Trump decided to answer a different question — one nobo dy asked.
'I'd like to say, you know, a little controversial, but I couldn't care less,' Trump said. 'We have a lot of bad criminals that came…into this country and they came in stupidly.
'And it did happen, but we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time,' he continued. 'People that whack people over the head with a baseball bat from behind when they're not looking and kill them. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that'll be the next job that we'll work on together.'
Trump is essentially echoing what he said in April about how he wants to deport 'homegrown criminals' to prisons in El Salvador, which, again, in a normal America, would have raised eyebrows across party lines, ideologies, races and nationalities.
This is why everyone, especially Black people, who are claiming Trump's anti-immigration warpath isn't our fight, is failing to see the forest for the trees.
Trump sold his mass deportation agenda as one that would prioritize getting foreign-born violent criminals out of the country, and yet, nearly half of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees either have no criminal record at all or have only been convicted of minor offenses, including traffic violations.
Trump has thoroughly proven that he believes the Constitution ends where his rule begins, and that he will eagerly boot documented migrants out of the U.S. without due process and without even providing evidence that they have committed a deportable offense.
In fact, during the same press conference outside of 'Alligator Alcatraz,' Trump threatened to deport the presumptive Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, which his MAGA minions have been calling for despite the fact that Mamdani is a naturalized U.S. citizen who has lived in the States since he was 7 years old. Trump claimed he's not sure Mamdani is in the country legally. His source? Well, he heard people were saying it.
From ABC News:
When asked by a reporter what his message is to Mamdani — after he said in a victory speech following the New York City Democratic mayoral primary that he would 'stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors' — Trump responded, 'Well then, we'll have to arrest him.'
'Look, we don't need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation,' Trump continued.
'A lot of people are saying he's here illegally,' Trump said. 'We're going to look at everything. Ideally, he's going to turn out to be much less than a communist. But right now he's a communist. That's not a socialist.'
This is what Trump is all about: blindly calling them a communist or a criminal or a Hamas supporter or an MS-13 gang member, proving none of it, and deporting them all anyway.
This is why the president is attacking birthright citizenship, which, as we previously noted, is 'grounded in the same constitutional principles, and shaped by the same racial and economic forces that eventually allowed African Americans and many other people of color to gain U.S. citizenship.'
As for Trump's often-repeated claims that violent crime is out of control in the U.S., once again, he's just lying. As we previously reported, crime databases from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies show violent crime has largely trended downwards in the U.S. and is currently at the lowest it has been in decades. And, Black people, who exactly do you think Trump — who once cited this fictitious rise in crime while suggesting that cops could better do their jobs if they simply had 'one real rough, nasty day,' or 'one rough hour' where they could presumably commit violent acts of police brutality freely and without fear of consequence — is looking to target with his threats of deporting 'homegrown' criminals?
The 34-time felon who has been found liable for sexual assault wants to deport any and everyone who opposes him, or whom he finds undesirable — and every single person in the U.S., whether they're here legally or not, should be concerned by that.
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Op-Ed: We Should All Be More Concerned That Trump Keeps Threatening To Deport US Citizens was originally published on newsone.com