Refuse, Resist

“As President I will immediately end the migrant invasion of America. We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries, terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App), revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration). I will save our cities and towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and all across America.” President-Elect Donald Trump can’t be faulted for not telling us what’s on his mind. And on this matter, he doesn’t flinch at numbers of 20 million or so to be expelled from our borders, undocumented or otherwise. This means temporary legal status for refugees, like Haitians ‘eating our pets,’ will be abolished. He not only tells us this racist nonsense, he does so repeatedly, drawing the greatest ‘red meat’ fascist chants during his rallies, even those held in locations with hardly any recent immigrants of any sort or status. Trump offers his crowds a rung on a hierarchical socio-economic ladder where they always have ‘the Other’ to view as beneath them. But what Trump doesn’t reveal is the core irrationalism of his immigration program. Set aside the 20 million overall goal for a moment. To deport just 1 million over one year would cost the taxpayers nearly $90 billion, or about $90,000 for each deportee. Why is the cost so high? We’re not even including the moral cost, which is immeasurable. After all, no change is needed to U.S. law to start deportations. Being in the U.S. without proper immigration status is a civil violation, with a fine starting at $25. Six months in jail is an option, and penalties are doubled for repeat offenders. Some are surprised at the small scale. Many traffic offenses draw harsher terms. But what matters is the ‘criminal’ label. That’s what turns a civil offender into ‘the Other.’ And deportation is considered the core legal civil penalty for it.  For mass deportations, two things are required. The most important is instilling fear. Why so? Because it motivates self-deportation, the cheapest option. We can see it at work today in the increase of Haitians fleeing the city of Springfield, Ohio at the sight of armed Nazi militias near their homes. Fear leading to self-deportation was a major factor in Mexicans and Mexican-Americans fleeing to Mexico in large numbers during the ‘Wetback’ raids of the 1930s and 1950s. It was seen as better to cross the border without a police record than as the result of one. The former held the promise of an easier return when the fear subsided.  The Israelis are also good at using fear. Self-deportation is one reason why we have Palestinian communities in many U.S. cities, although with less hope of return within them. But truth be told, the Israelis had much to learn from us. Our entire history is rooted in mass removals through fear. The Trail of Tears, where Andy Jackson, turned over Cherokee land to European-American settlers ,is only the most remembered. But what is the second factor? Arrests are far from removal. Mass deportations require money, large quantities of it. And the money is not thrown into the winds. It’s massively transferred from the taxpayers into the coffers of those who profit from deportations. Arresting people is one thing, and the cost is relatively minor. But detaining them, judging them, and then exporting them by the planeloads is where the costs, and the profits, can soar. Our Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, can’t do this work alone. In 2024, Congress only allowed them the funds for 41,500 ‘detention beds,’ less than 5% of what might be needed. At the same time, as of September 2024, some 3.7 million immigrants, arrested and now awaiting resolution of their cases, were obviously not jailed, but ’at large.’ They were living with friends or relatives, and working ‘off the books’ along with tens of millions of others neither arrested nor detained but ‘living in the shadows.’ It’s why we hear the refrain that ‘our immigration system is broken.’ Indeed, it's capable of many decent reforms, but not on Trump's watch. As of the end of September, 2024, 3.7 million people in the county were waiting for their claims for asylum, resident status or work permits to be resolved. And even if they were judged negatively and sentenced to deportation, many still could not be deported because their designated countries of origin had not agreed to accept deportation flights from the United States, or at least they likely would not accept anything like the numbers Trump hopes to dump on them. The truth is Trump has no practical plan for mass deportation. We might say, as he said about health care reform, that he has ‘a concept of a plan.’ And that concept can be reduced to another irrationalism, ‘use the military.’ Here, Trump wants to rely on Sections 25- through 255 in Title 10 of the United States Code, aka ‘The Insurrection Act.’ It dates back to 1798, but was most recently used when U.S. troops were sent to Los Angeles to suppress the revolts around the Rodney King crisis. It’s the exception in U.S. law that allows for setting aside the standing Posse Comitatus Act forbidding the use of U.S. troops to enforce the law within the U.S. It’s been used every two or three decades throughout our history, most notably in recent times by FDR to imprison Japanese Americans and by JFK to enforce school desegregation in the South. Trump’s projected use of the military, however, would be larger by several orders of magnitude. Rather than several hundred to 20,000 engaged in violence or a projected threat of it, Trump is aiming at tens of millions living and working peaceably in large cities or rural farms. Imagine what would happen in the Pilsen area of Chicago, 93% Mexican, or East Los Angeles, 95% Latino, if platoons of 30 or so federal troops, accompanied by a handful of ICE agents, began breaking down doors in search of those without papers. Let’s just say that passive acceptance is the least likely outcome. And even if it was, where are all of those seized to be detained? Tent cities put up by FEMA and surrounded with barbed wire? People still have agency and allies, and wire cutters can be obtained in any hardware store. Trump is deluded with several irrational assumptions. First is thinking that only he and his troops have a vote on this matter. They do not. We all have a say, whether he gets it or not. Second is the assumption that his troops will obey unjust orders, especially over long periods, and in platoons where ‘whites’ may be a minority. Third is that a divided Congress will not cut off the funds for his stupidities. Our old comrade Tom Hayden, RIP, once remarked: ‘Wars end when three things happen. The streets become ungovernable. The soldiers refuse to fight. And Congress cuts off the money.’ Here we will add a corollary: the three points apply even more so when the wars are being waged against tens of millions of people within our borders. Trump’s dream of restoring a ‘White Republic’ is really a bloody nightmare for the rest of us. Thus it falls upon us to do everything required to make sure it never happens, or it’s stopped early in its tracks. How do we do it? First, we start where we are, at the local and state levels, asserting a progressive version of ‘states rights.’ (See Van Gosse’s article below). We begin by gathering the information and contacts required for systematic non-cooperation.  We can talk to our local police and sheriffs about refusing to assist ICE and other federal efforts, starting with not using our local jails for detentions. Many of them may not agree at first, but some will. If nothing else, they will recognize the stupidity of Trump’s delusions and the cost of it. Then we organize legal aid teams for those subject to arrest. We oppose any secret courts or closed hearings. We talk to every local, county and state elected official. If we can’t convince them to ignore Trump’s demands on them, we can convince them they will be removed from office or their office will be made ‘ungovernable.’ Finally, in addition to the justice of it all—most of us do not want to be the ‘Good Germans’ in this movie—we need to expose and educate all concerned around its true cost economically. ‘A Day without Immigrants’ is a good instructive example. Ask people, in going about their usual day's activities, how many times do they come into contact with immigrant workers, including those likely without papers? Who gets the veggies in our markets? Who works in our restaurants? Who cares for our elders? Who works on tough construction sites and landscaping? Who cares for children in day care centers? Trump captures your attention with delusions about ‘the economy,’ but what happens as he tears out much of its heart and wrecks it? Don’t let this Chump take an inch without a fight. And get to work on it now.