Trump Is Building a Global Gulag for Immigrants Captured by ICE
The State Department refused to provide a complete list of countries with which the U.S. has made agreements to accept deportees from other countries — often referred to as third-country nationals — citing the sensitivity of diplomatic communications. But the Trump administration is planning a major increase in deportation flights in coming weeks to destinations across the globe, according to a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, as well as published reports.
In remarks outside the White House on Friday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller offered a glimpse of the global scope of deportations. “We send planes to Iraq. We send planes to Yemen. We send planes to Haiti. We send planes to Angola,” he said. “I mean, ICE is sending planes all over the world all the time. Anyone who came here illegally, we’re finding them and we’re getting them out.”
The Democrats’ position on immigration during Biden's presidency is confounding. Millions of people came into the country illegally, and it seemed as though the Democrats didn't care. Quite the opposite — they seemed to welcome it.
This is one of the many areas in which the Left left me behind long ago. I welcome immigration. I recognize that this country's immigration system needs reform — it takes far too long for some immigrants to get seen in an immigration court, sometimes longer than a decade. No one should have to wait in limbo this long.
But the United States shouldn't have open borders, either. It doesn't make me a conservative or a nationalist to say that the integrity of a community matters — shared values, shared ethics, shared language. These things develop naturally as people assimilate into the culture — this is the famous 'melting pot' we hear so much about.
But assimilation can only happen slowly, and immigration in the last five or so years has not been slow. Many American citizens have watched their communities rapidly change (though admittedly, my community is not one of them) in the last few years and they are understandably unnerved by this. This doesn't make them racist or xenophobic (though there are always some of those people), it’s merely a natural human reaction to change.
This is the uncomfortable truth behind a lot of the fear-mongering done by the Right in the last few years: under Biden (and Trump's first term), the country lost control of illegal immigration.
And because of that, we're facing these draconian deportation policies from Trump's second administration. To be clear: deportation should be on the table. If you came here illegally, I'm sorry, but we have borders, and those borders matter. But we do want immigrants, and in order to facilitate them coming here, we need to overhaul our immigration system.
Until that happens, I think we're stuck in this vicious cycle of the Left's strange indifference and the Right's near-gleeful cruelty.