Campaign Notes, Elections, Immigration, Jamie O, Political Crack

Trump Promises Blood, Media Yawns

These are our fellow Americans, happily promoting fascism.

You might think that this would be much bigger news. The Republican Party’s presidential candidate promised violent deportations of immigrants. Trump told everyone it would be “bloody.”

Indeed, it was not big news.

Deporting millions of people would not be a smooth, easy task.

A mass deportation of immigrants in the U.S. would create significant logistical, humanitarian, and economic challenges, with far-reaching consequences for both immigrants and U.S. society.

First, the logistics of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants would be daunting. According to estimates, around 11 million people are living in the U.S. without legal status. Removing such a vast number of individuals would require a massive expansion of immigration enforcement, including hiring tens of thousands of new agents, building additional detention centers, and securing transportation for deportations. The sheer scale of the operation would also strain local law enforcement and judicial systems, requiring resources that could otherwise be used for community safety. Trump’s minions have suggested deputizing militias to help as a solution, a deeply horrifying thought.

The human cost of mass deportations would be severe. Immigrants make up integral parts of communities across the U.S., and many have deep ties to the country, with families, jobs, and homes they’ve established over years or even decades. Deporting parents, for example, would leave countless U.S.-born children in foster care or torn apart from their families, causing long-term emotional trauma. These mass removals could also force immigrants to return to dangerous or unstable countries that they have little connection to, putting their lives at risk. Trump talks a lot about the number of deported “immigrants” would be 20 million, given the estimated number of undocumented immigrants this means he is not above deporting U.S. citizens.

Economically, deportations on this scale would be disastrous. Undocumented immigrants make up a significant portion of the U.S. workforce, particularly in industries such as agriculture, construction, hospitality, and caregiving. Their removal would create labor shortages, potentially driving up costs for businesses and consumers alike. In sectors like farming, where immigrants perform much of the labor, food production could drop sharply, leading to higher prices at grocery stores – you know, inflation, that thing we’ve heard about for the last three years. Additionally, immigrants contribute to the economy through taxes and consumer spending, both of which would take a hit if millions were removed.

Finally, the political and social repercussions could be profound. Mass deportations would likely spark widespread protests and legal challenges, deepening divisions in the country and further polarizing the debate over immigration. The prospect of such a policy would also damage the U.S.’s international reputation, as many view forced deportations on such a scale as a violation of human rights. Trump no doubt would counter this with violence towards protesters and threats toward any nation criticizing such a heinous event.

The media needs to talk more about this. Ask Trump hard questions about what he envisions, and make him go into detail. This stuff is unfiltered fascism, things that no American presidential candidate should even be hinting at, but here we are. He has about 40-45% of the country backing him on it. This is dangerous stuff, and more Americans should be aware of what this would look like.

A hint: Trump already has told us what it would look like: bloody.

The last word goes to Steve Earle.

 

 

 

2 thoughts on “Trump Promises Blood, Media Yawns”

  1. 11 million people is almost twice the size of the Holocaust! When the shattered, dismembered United States of Trump is defeated, with the conquerors make GOP enablers walk through the rows of corpses in the concentration camps?

  2. The actual body count of the Nazi regime was also 11 million. Slightly more than half of them were Jews, but various other groups were targeted, some for ethnic or cultural reasons (e.g. the Romany, colloquially known as Gypsies), and some for physical and/or mental handicaps. (I’m Jewish, so I had the six million figure impressed on me from an early age, but later I realized the value of respecting one’s allies.)

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