[Photo by Hope Swearingen, 2017.]
Alternet.org is running a piece I wrote after having far too many gut-punch conversations in recent weeks with students on what their lives are like right now. An earlier version ran in the Austin American Statesman last week. Here’s an excerpt:
We need to point out that this climate of fear seems to have been built by design. In the early part of this decade, some members of the Republican Party floated the idea of “self-deportation” as a means of reducing the undocumented population without mobilizing a large deportation force. The idea was that if you could make the lives of undocumented immigrants miserable enough, those immigrants would choose to leave the country on their own. The cruelty behind such thinking is obvious; even Donald Trump called it “crazy” and “maniacal” and criticized Mitt Romney for adopting the idea during the 2012 presidential campaign.
But the thinking behind self-deportation is back, in large part because Trump has let his immigration policies be shaped by men like Jeff Sessions and Kris Kobach, the author of Arizona’s SB 1070. Department of Homeland Security secretary John Kelly made it clear in a March interview that his agency intends to use cruelty and fear to deter illegal immigration. While defending the possibility of separating children from their mothers at the border, Kelly said, “Yes, I’m considering [that], in order to deter movement along this terribly dangerous network. I am considering exactly that. They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents.”
That logic, in which cruelty functions as a deterrent and fear is a disincentive, is likely behind the highly public, large-scale ICE raids in February, and ICE’s decision to encroach on areas previously considered sensitive, like churches and courthouses. Such logic may also explain why Texas Republicans paid no attention to city police chiefs who said SB4 would make immigrant communities less safe. After all, if undocumented immigrants don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods, aren’t they more likely to leave?
The Scholarly Texan 