Trump’s Deadly and ‘Orwellian’ Refugee Policy
This anti-immigrant and cruel administration is arresting people whom the US government invited in.
Donald Trump’s goons have carried out his mass deportation agenda with violence, capriciousness, and cruelty. But the agenda at least follows an underlying logic.
It purports to remove immigrants who entered our country without legal permission. A government of laws, as John Adams once framed America’s aspiration, needs to control in-migration across its borders in the country’s best interest.
Policy toward refugees, however, serves an entirely different purpose. The federal government, as authorized by Congress, screens and decides whom to admit. It does that to save some of the world’s most desperate people from persecution, and in the process buttress our reputation as a beacon of hope for freedom.
That makes Trump’s refugee agenda all the more perverse. His administration now asserts the right to summarily arrest, detain and deport those already granted permission to live here.
Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security has begun doing that. In its campaign against the Somali community in Minnesota, DHS has arrested at least 72 refugees, sending many to Texas for indefinite detention.
A federal judge in Minnesota has halted the DHS policy as a constitutionally dubious intrusion that “turns the refugees’ American dream into a dystopian nightmare.” But his order doesn’t stop Noem from attempting the same thing elsewhere.