The first time I learned of Donald Trump’s political aspirations was in 2015, when he announced his intent to run for president and made a speech claiming that Mexico was sending scores of violent criminals over the border.
As an immigrant from Mexico, hearing him talk about my community in that way was jarring. But like many others, I didn’t think he could actually rise to power, given his political inexperience and, well, his personality.
Ten years later and just a few months into his second presidential term, Trump is just as eager to purge the U.S. of its Latin American immigrants. This time around, he’s realizing it won’t be as easy as he thought.
When he started his second presidential term, Trump was ambitious. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller announced in May that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would seek to arrest at least 3,000 immigrants per day to reach the administration’s mass deportation goals, as several outlets reported.
The number is outlandish; it’s assumed that he’s looking for people who have committed crimes, but those who are paying attention are seeing it play out differently.
In a court filing last week, Justice Department lawyers said the Department of Homeland Security had never actually set such a quota for arrests and deportations, The Guardian reported.
This sudden amnesia about that lofty quota feels a bit suspect. Trump’s whole campaign was run on the premise of arresting and deporting as many undocumented people as possible. In his process of trying to get rid of them, it seems that Trump is learning how beautifully entwined immigrants are in the fabric of this country.
The backtracking on this 3K-a-day quota might boil down to the reality that there aren’t nearly as many undocumented criminals as the administration had hoped. ICE has resorted to arresting people who are leaving immigration courts, some of whom are in the middle of seeking legal asylum. Even when allegedly playing dirty, the administration has managed to deport only around 700 people per day. On top of that, 65% of the immigrants detained since last October have no criminal convictions, according to the Cato Institute.
It’s fascinating to see the administration run into the limitations of its own narrative about immigrants. The way I see it, its only choice now is to try and gaslight us and say there was never a goal for how many people it wanted to arrest and deport.
It makes sense, though, when you consider that there are approximately 11 million undocumented people in the U.S., most of whom are contributing to and deeply ingrained in our communities and our economy—so much so that the agricultural industry has even pushed back on mass deportations.
Growing up in Texas, my family had friends who had first arrived in the U.S. undocumented and eventually obtained citizenship. Some of them went on to become doctors, teachers, or had their own businesses. Their status was not something they talked about openly, and likely not something the people around them knew. What many don’t realize is that there are immense financial and social barriers to obtaining U.S. citizenship that make it pretty difficult for most. Some immigrants even have to win a lottery to get in — literally.
When I was 15, my own family’s immigration status was challenged, and we had to leave the U.S. When we did, many of my friends were shocked — I spoke fluent English and was active in school activities, and they just assumed I was like any other American kid. Like millions of others, we didn’t fit neatly into any of Trump’s stereotypes about who immigrants are.
These stereotypes, instead of fading as this country gets more diverse, are being amplified even further during this administration. It’s time for a reality check.