Fear and Expulsion: Under Trump, History Is Poised to Repeat Itself
On our blog. https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/fear-and-expulsion-under-trump-history-is-poised-to-repeat-itself
The U.S. has repeatedly tried to remove nonwhite people from society, often leading to generational trauma.
January 31, 2025
By
President Donald Trump has wasted little time since returning to the White House carrying through on his vows to stop certain immigrants from coming to the United States and to remove many who are here. Over the past months, Capital & Main has explored and reported on migrants and asylum seekers who’ve been detained at the border, examining their fate and the rules that keep them in custody. This is the first in a two-part series looking at the history of mass deportations in the United States and what it portends for the future.
Pedro Rios’ paternal grandparents were both born in the United States, yet the government forced them to move to Mexico in the 1930s. They were teenagers at the time.
Rios, the director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program, guesses that government officials sent his grandparents on trains to the border, but he doesn’t know the story. That’s because neither of them talked about the experience.
He said his grandmother seemed to be unable to forgive the part of herself that led her to be expelled from her home country.
“She despised being Mexican to some extent,” Rios said. “I think it was because of the discrimination that she lived through.”
Over its history, the United States has repeatedly worked to exclude and remove people in moments when xenophobic, nativist and white supremacist voices have been able to sway public opinion towards fear, including the exclusion of Chinese immigrants, forced removals of Mexicans and Mexican Americans and the relocation and incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans. The result of those efforts was often generational trauma, with elders unable to talk about what they went through, as in the case of Rios’ family.
Now, with promises of mass deportation from the Trump administration, many academics see that history poised to repeat itself.
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https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/fear-and-expulsion-under-trump-history-is-poised-to-repeat-itself
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