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How Many Laws Will Trump Break to Make America Predominantly White Again?
Much of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy can be understood only by examining them through the lens of his obsession with deporting people and restricting immigration from non-white parts of the world.
Oct 25, 2025
The Trump administration aspires to deport a million people in its first year of office. The president has also spoken of the more ambitious goal of deporting 15-20 million undocumented people overall, even if that category probably covers only 14 million folks. The discrepancy of a couple million people shouldn’t bother President Donald Trump. He’s happy to deport those with green cards, H-1B visas, and even American citizens.
Deporting a million people in a year is a heavy lift. The previous record, 409,849 people, was during the Obama administration, as part of the 1.5 million deportations he conducted in his first term. Trump, no doubt, wants to best Barack Obama in this category, since he’s determined to outshine the former president in every respect, even the dubious ones.
Despite all the high-profile seizures by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the deals to dump Venezuelans to Salvadoran prisons, and the truly crazy efforts to send people to countries they’ve never even visited like Eswatini and South Sudan, the Trump administration has managed to deport only about 350,000 people through the end of August. That includes the 200,000 by ICE and the rest by Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard, plus some self-deportations. Another 60,000 are languishing in ICE detention centers. The government is currently monitoring about 180,000 families and individuals in its Alternatives to Detention program, which may end up becoming a Preparation for Deportation program.
Most of the people currently in detention—over 70%—have never committed any crime, which undermines the claim by the Trump administration that he’s going after the “bad hombres.”
German citizens failed to stop the Nazis. Will Americans stand up and be counted?
Detention is pretty much a fast track to deportation. After all, detainees often don’t have access to lawyers. As the American Prospect reports, “ICE uses bureaucracy and location transfers to isolate their detainees from both their families and their lawyers, limiting their ability to get out of their predicaments and increasing misery and hopelessness.” One immigration lawyer told me that some of his clients have disappeared for several days in ICE detention—and these included people who were willing to self-deport.
Trump is not close to meeting his ambitious deportation goals. That’s no comfort to all the immigrants whose lives he has already upended.
ICE Is Not Nice
The scenes involving the roundup of refugees and migrants have been harrowing. Consider this description:
Buses backed up to apartment buildings and were filled with screaming, crying people. Hospital beds were emptied. A cancer patient operated on the previous day was carried away. One woman gave birth while police waited to haul off mother and baby. Younger children were permitted to be left behind, and many parents desperately accepted that choice in the hope that neighbors or orphanages would take them in.
Oh, I’m sorry, I got mixed up. That’s a description of the French police rounding up 13,000 Jewish refugees in 1942 at the behest of their Nazi overseers, as reported by David Wyman in his seminal book, The Abandonment of the Jews.
Here, by comparison, are three snapshots of recent ICE actions:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have in recent days deported the Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl—separating them indefinitely—and three children ages 2, 4, and 7 who are US citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers said Saturday.
In Chicago:
Agents used unmarked trucks and a helicopter to surround the five-story apartment building. NewsNation, which was invited to observe the operation, reported agents “rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters.” Agents then went door to door, woke up residents, and used zip ties to restrain them. Residents and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which canvassed the area, said those who were zip tied included children and US citizens.
In New York:
On the morning of September 4, dozens of masked federal agents raided a snack bar factory in the small town of Cato, New York. They claimed there was a “violent felon” in the plant, but proceeded to siphon off and hold anyone who looked Latinx. At least 69 workers were initially detained, with 57 still in custody or deported, though some say that could be an undercount. There are multiple reports of aggression—knees on necks, blows to heads—used during the raid.
This is happening not just to the undocumented and those on the rock-strewn path to citizenship. Quite a few American citizens have also been caught up in the ICE dragnet. At least 170 have been detained, according to ProPublica:
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched. About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
Much of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy can be understood only by examining them through the lens of his obsession with deporting people and restricting immigration from non-white parts of the world. The question remains: How many laws will the Trump administration break and how many crimes will it commit in this effort to make America predominantly white again?
German citizens failed to stop the Nazis. Will Americans stand up and be counted?
Trump’s Immigration-Obsessed Foreign Policy
In exchange for a payment of about $5 million, the tiny country of Eswatini in southern Africa has agreed to receive up to 160 deportees from a variety of countries. Human rights groups in Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, have challenged the arrangement in court. A US District Court judge also blocked the removal of deportees to third countries back in April, but the Supreme Court lifted that ban in June.
The $5 million is only part of the sweetheart deal. In August, the Trump administration waived all tariffs on Eswatini goods entering the United States—in contrast to the 30% rate that South Africa will be paying. A number of countries hoping for tariff reductions or similarly favorable treatment from the Trump administration—Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kosovo, Panama, Rwanda, South Sudan—have also accepted the transport of deportees.
Eswatini does have its limits. It refused to accept Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national that the Trump administration sent to a prison in El Salvador. Garcia was freed and sent back to the States, only to be arrested again by the US government and charged with human trafficking. Afraid that Garcia will be released by court order, the Trump administration is scrambling to find some country that will take him. Garcia is living proof of the administration’s lies—contrary to what Trump has said, he is not a gang member or a human trafficker. No wonder Trump wants him out of the country.
He has put a sign on America’s front door that reads: Wealthy, Christian, Right-Wing Whites Only.
El Salvador has been an enthusiastic backer of Trump’s deportation plans. The country received $5 million to house deportees like Garcia in its horrific prisons. In addition, the State Department recently gave the country its highest safety rating, ahead of France and Spain. Trump has also backed Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s bid to become the country’s leader for life. Finally, the country faces a mere 10% tariff on its goods, Trump’s lowest tier.
In one of the least savory parts of the arrangement with El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut a deal with Bukele to return several members of the MS-13 gang who were cooperating with US authorities. Bukele wanted them back because they had information about members of his administration who had cut their own deals with the country’s various gangs. It’s best to keep your enemies close, as the expression goes, particularly if you can put them in a dangerous high-security prison.
The immigration issue also affects relations with Venezuela, where the Trump administration has used the threat of Tren de Aragua, and the alleged inroads the gang has made in US society, to step up its efforts to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro.
Trump has attempted to tilt immigration policy in favor of English speakers and white people more generally, even as the overall quotas for immigrants are radically reduced from 125,000 per year to 7,500. Among the proposals considered by the administration is one that would give preference to such groups as Europeans who support the radical right and white Afrikaners from South Africa. The overall purpose is a reduction in American diversity because, as one of the internal proposals argues, “The sharp increase in diversity has reduced the level of social trust essential for the functioning of a democratic polity.”
The administration has also radically increased the fee for a work permit—the H-1B visa—to $100,000. Although there are some exemptions to the new fee, it is clearly designed to restrict entrance to the United States to the wealthy.
Taken together, Trump has treated the “shithole” countries he identified in his first term—the poorer countries of the Global South—as dumping grounds for undesirable elements. And he has put a sign on America’s front door that reads: Wealthy, Christian, Right-Wing Whites Only.
Barack Obama wanted to create an administration that looked like America. Donald Trump wants to create an America that looks like his administration.
How Deportations Shape Domestic Policy
Trump knows a hot-button issue when he touches one, and immigration remains a great way to defeat Democrats who, however anti-immigration some of them have become, will never stoop to the race-baiting lows that Trump uses to wow his supporters. The invading “army” of migrants approaching the Mexico border, the fictitious pet eaters of Springfield, Ohio, the “murderers” and “rapists” from points south responsible for all the crime in America: These mendacious memes propelled Trump to victory in 2024.
His immigration policies are no surprise: They were all laid out in detail in Project 2025: stopping refugee resettlement; ending Temporary Protect Status for Haitians, Venezuelans, and others; ending visas for foreign students. Trump has gone further. Even Project 2025 didn’t propose revoking birthright citizenship and ignoring the Constitution.
The militarization of the United States, at the expense of social welfare, is now directed not just at China or securing access to critical raw materials: it is directed at the US population.
Trump has put ICE raids at the center of his approach, but there has been pushback from Democratic-controlled cities and states. So, the president is sending in the National Guard to ensure greater access and mobility for ICE agents. The use of the US military for domestic operations is unprecedented, of course, and several judges have ruled the president’s actions unconstitutional. Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to suppress “rebellion,” which would allow him to use the military to impose civilian law (his government’s laws). It’s not quite martial law—which is the imposition of military laws on civilians—but it certainly aims in that direction (and the two may well be conflated in Trump’s mind).
ICE, meanwhile, has received a huge surge in funding—$170 billion in new money—at a time of cutbacks in virtually all non-military parts of the federal government. If ICE and associated agencies constituted a military, it would be the 13th largest one in the world, as Sarah Lazare and Lindsay Koshgarian point out. The militarization of the United States, at the expense of social welfare, is now directed not just at China or securing access to critical raw materials: it is directed at the US population.
Trump is attacking diversity more generally, as the changes in federal immigration policy suggest. Because birthright citizenship has changed the demographics of the United States, its repeal has been a priority for white nationalists, and they have also cheered Trump’s moves in this direction. Meanwhile, the president is going after diversity in federal institutions, federal grantmaking, and across the US educational system.
At the moment, lawyers and judges are the thin line that holds back the lawlessness of the Trump administration. A few civic groups like the Immigration Defense Project and Freedom for Immigrants are fighting the administration. But it will require a lot more public outcry to defend America’s disappeared and preserve diversity in this country.
As Bad as Nazis?
The Nazis were also obsessed with the diversity of German society in the 1930s. They ultimately decided not just to stigmatize and imprison Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others. The Nazis killed them in huge numbers.
Trump and his white nationalist allies are currently at the stigmatize and deport stage. They’re content for the moment to let the killing take place elsewhere. The administration is not only erecting higher walls against refugees and immigrants—leading to more deaths among the desperate overseas—it is sending those who thought they’d already made it to safety to warzones (South Sudan), certain imprisonment (Afghanistan, Russia), and failed states (Haiti).
The US business community is heavily reliant on immigrant labor, much of it undocumented, in agriculture, construction, and the food industry. But it has failed to stand up for its immigrant workforce. The international community is busy making deals with Trump, not censuring him. Congress has been largely silent (though it recently announced an inquiry into ICE treatment of US citizens).
At a time when countries around the world are shrinking in population, the United States has remained strong because of all the people who have come here from abroad to work, to contribute to the tax base and Social Security, and, yes, to have babies. So, who will combine the necessary moral and practical arguments to convince the mass of Americans that the very survival of this country depends on immigrants?
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How to Live Under Right-Wing Rule
Fascism, like communism, is an abstraction to Americans. We know little about it. We have not lived under it. Given current circumstances, let’s see if we are fast learners.
Oct 22, 2025
The right-wing takeover of our country—make that much of the developed world—has changed the calculus for the individual citizen. The clamping down has begun. Repression is the order of the day. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s grotesque behavior is a first order tactic in a strategy of intimidation.
Why are we so obedient? Because the orders are legal? Rulers can always produce lawyers to provide legal justification. Alberto Gonzales provided George W. Bush a legal exemption for torture.
Put starkly: Were the criminal verdicts rendered against the Nazis at Nuremberg due to the failure of their lawyers to provide the necessary legal exemptions?
The myth we enjoy repeating is that the United States is a beacon to the world. In some respects it was true. We did herald a new contract with the people born out of the principle of individual freedom from hierarchical rule. The monarchy is long gone, but hierarchy remains in its lasting form as wealth.
A lesson from the history of the Third Reich is that to do nothing changes nothing. Not being on the side of the weak is the same as being on the side of the strong.
The three great powers of the United States, Russia, and China are each authoritarian, as are an ever increasing number of subordinate powers. Israel is the United States of the Middle East, a technological superpower built on displacement of the Indigenous. The United States is the Saudi Arabia of the West, built on enshrinement of wealth as a first principle to which all other principles must be secondary.
No other country, including the United States, can dismember a dissident in full view of the world and still attract the leading international sports organizations as it has to its kingdom, including the very recent bailout the kingdom has proffered to the Metropolitan Opera. It is a marvelous feat of image building.
We must cast aside all allusions and put the matter straight. We are not “losing our democracy.” It slipped away long ago under the shadow of finance capital. Intellectual appeals to preserve it conceal hidden support for the status quo and are, in fact, reactionary. Thankfully, that approach seems doomed to fail.
Nobody feels democracy in their bones. What we feel, what all humans feel deep down, is a thirst for freedom. And that is what we are losing.
What to do? A lesson from the history of the Third Reich is that to do nothing changes nothing. Not being on the side of the weak is the same as being on the side of the strong.
Many people in our communities have begun to resist the terrorist practices of ICE, with precious little to resist with. Some law enforcement agencies say that they will not “cooperate” with ICE. This should not be mistaken for solidarity. ICE is happy with them on the sidelines.
Why Real Patriots Should Worry Us
Surely any true American will accept without question the obligation of patriotism. There’s some things all patriotic Americans come to learn. The world is a better place because of us. We only fight to defend ourselves. We stand for democracy. We are the good guys. God is on our side.
Since these things become transparently false upon serious examination, something else must be behind the fervor with which most Americans hold their patriotism. We know a lot about conforming behavior and how destructive it can become. We know enough to worry us.
In the case of patriotism, conformity has clearly won out. Its victory can be as uncomplicated as understanding the dynamic of fan mentality. The sports fan does not complicate things. You root for the home team.
Somehow we have failed to notice the patriotism of our own political enforcers, our armed and masked federal agents loyally dragging people off the streets.
But pastimes are of little consequence. They are not national secrecy, national security, or national criminality. Did I say national criminality? What dare I speak of to true American patriots? I can speak of nothing to true patriots but only to those whose patriotism is less true. Who manage to retain a critical faculty when it comes to taking orders.
People are not born to follow orders. We have to be trained. In order for the training to be thorough and lasting, it has to come drip by drip. So that we are convinced that it is a good thing. The only thing. Patriotism is the product of this training.
Democracy, as a concept, plays an active propaganda role. If the country is ruled by “us,” there is no question of disloyalty to it. That we discuss our “loss of democracy” is an indication of how well trained we have become. Real democracy has never been with us, nor was it sought after by the founders. The very opposite. Government is safely in the hands of the wealthy and powerful.
The good news is that we needn’t lament its loss. The bad news is that dangerous rifts have developed among the ruling class, the only class capable of restraining a presidential administration that is completely out of control. Capitalists are not a monolith. They compete against each other. Some factions will easily accommodate to authoritarianism. That puts us in a stall.
I said earlier that we know enough about conforming behavior to worry us. This leads to a disturbing question—was Hitler patriotic?—and its relevance to the subject at hand since patriotism is not a moral value. It’s a habit. A habit of thought.
The SS (Schutzstaffel) was the completeness of Third Reich patriotism, the loyal enforcers of the political will of the Nazi state.
Somehow we have failed to notice the patriotism of our own political enforcers, our armed and masked federal agents loyally dragging people off the streets. They are true American patriots.
Fascism doesn’t come for a visit. It comes to stay. The 21st century version doesn’t have to align perfectly with those of Europe past. Fascism, like communism, is an abstraction to Americans. We know little about it. We have not lived under it. Given current circumstances, let’s see if we are fast learners.
The first lesson is that law enforcement is not, has not been, and should never be expected to be on the side of the people. Law enforcement serves the state. The state is not accountable to the people.
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Trump's Anti-Immigrant Violence Is a Message for the Rest of Us
This is how it always starts, this process of getting citizens used to the government using violence that will one day be turned against them.
Oct 13, 2025
For the Trump regime, the brutality is the point. It’s the means to the end of a violent, single-party state that they’re openly proclaiming, even though our media insists on turning away from it.
Back in the 1980s, I lived with my family and worked in Germany for a bit short of two years. The international relief agency I worked for (and lived at the HQ of) jumped through all the necessary hoops to get me a work permit, but if I’d overstayed my permit or visa nobody would have kicked in my front door or invaded my home with flash-bangs and automatic weapons drawn.
Nobody would have smashed in the windows of my car, or shot me with pepper balls or rubber-coated bullets, or snatched our three children and put them into a privatized “Christian” foster care system from which thousands of kids simply vanish.
Instead, a polite fellow from the Ausländerbehörden (“Immigration Office”) would have dropped by, perhaps with a local police officer, to tell me how to navigate the system to either acquire the right to stay, or work out how I’d be leaving. He’d give me a few weeks, or possibly even a few months, to get everything together and leave the country.
The brutality, in other words, is the point. It’s not an accident, a side effect, or the result of poor training. It’s intentional. It’s a signal of their broader intentions. Following the classic dictator’s playbook.
I knew a few German police officers; they’re incredibly professional, having to have graduated from a three-year college program and undergone what’s typically a yearlong probationary period before they can publicly handle a firearm.
This is how civilized countries handle “illegal immigration.” So, why are Border Czar Tom Homan, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump, et al., engaging in and celebrating such wild violence against people here?
There are now so many videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thugs unlawfully beating, kidnapping, and terrorizing brown people, their supporters, protesters, and journalists—even maliciously spraying pepper gas at peaceful protesters in inflatable animal costumes—that it’s getting impossible to keep track of them all.
From ICE agents smashing a car window to pull a man from his vehicle in New Bedford, Massachusetts (Apr. 16, 2025), to an ICE agent shooting Eric Díaz-Cruz in the face in Brooklyn (February 2020), to masked agents breaking a car window during an arrest outside a Beaverton, Oregon preschool (July 21, 2025), and even pepper balling a Chicago pastor in the head during a protest (September 2025), the videos keep piling up.
Add to that a viral clip of a cuffed Portland protester being wheeled away on a flatbed cart (October 2025), neighbors in Nashville forming a human chain to stop an ICE pickup (July 2019), and the on-camera violent throwing to the ground and arrest of a WGN journalist during a Chicago raid last week, and you get the picture.
This is how it always starts, this process of getting citizens used to the government using violence that will one day be turned against them.
When a regime wants to turn the police powers of the state—with all the brutality and violence they can legally wield—against its political opponents, it never starts with the members of the opposition party. But it always ends up there, be it in Germany in the 1930s or today’s Russia, Hungary, China, Turkey, Iran, etc., etc.
Hitler didn’t start by arresting and imprisoning lawmakers from or supporters of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Centre Party (Zentrum), or even the Communist Party (KPD) even though all of the three major German parties openly and outspokenly opposed his Nazi Party.
ICE doesn’t need to rappel from helicopters, smash windows, zip-tie shivering naked American citizen children, and terrorize their parents to get noncitizens to leave the country.
German Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem begins with, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.” But, in fact, first Hitler came for queer people.
A year before Nazis began attacking union leaders and socialists, a full five years before attacking Jewish-owned stores on Kristallnacht, the Nazis came for the trans people at the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin.
In 1930, the Institute had pioneered the first gender-affirming surgery in modern Europe. It’s director, Magnus Hirschfeld, had compiled the largest library of books and scientific papers on the LGBTQ+ spectrum in the world and was internationally recognized in the field of sexual and gender studies.
Being gay, lesbian, or trans was widely tolerated in Germany, at least in the big cities, when Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, and the German queer community was his first explicit target. Within weeks, the Nazis began a campaign to demonize queer people—with especially vitriolic attacks on trans people—across German media.
German states put into law bans on gender-affirming care, drag shows, and any sort of “public display of deviance,” enforcing a long-moribund German law, Paragraph 175, first put into the nation’s penal code in 1871, that outlawed homosexuality. Books and magazines telling stories of gay men and lesbians were removed from schools and libraries.
Thus, a mere five months after Hitler came to power, on May 6, 1933, Nazis showed up at the Institute and hauled over 20,000 books and manuscripts about gender and sexuality out in the street to burn, creating a massive bonfire. It was followed by open and widely publicized violence against gay men and trans women.
It was the first major Nazi book burning and violence against an “other,” and was celebrated with newsreels played in theaters across the nation. It wouldn’t be the last: Soon it spread to libraries and public high schools.
Having established the legal precedent for dragging people from their homes and imprisoning them, Hitler then began arresting members of the non-Nazi political parties and their followers.
But first, he knew he had to get Germans used to the idea of authorities of the state kicking in doors and dragging screaming people into the street.
When the only victims of this brutality were queer people and “non-Aryans,” ethnic Germans let him and his Stormtroopers get away with it because the objects of the violence were “them.”
But it never ends with “them.”
Fascist regimes always turn their police powers against their own people, first going after those who ridicule, oppose, or have turned away from support for their leader.
ICE doesn’t need to rappel from helicopters, smash windows, zip-tie shivering naked American citizen children, and terrorize their parents to get noncitizens to leave the country.
Instead, like in Germany and most other civilized nations, they could simply give people the equivalent of a speeding ticket with a certain amount of time to get their affairs in order and leave the country before a next step—arrest and forced deportation—takes place. And they could threaten their employers with large fines, like my employer in Germany would have faced had I overstayed my visa.
But not here in America. Here, the agenda is quite different and involves explicit and highly publicized violence against undocumented people and their property.
For a reason.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told us, when talking with Sean Hannity on Fox “News” in August, what that reason is, what their ultimate goal will be:
“The Democrat [sic] Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” (emphasis added)
Immigrants are just the Trump regime’s warm-up act, just like trans people and Gypsies were in 1933 Germany. The real goal of this administration—by their own declaration—is to turn America into a one-party-rule nation.
To get there, though, they first must get us used to Trump’s masked secret police using violence on the streets and in our homes, right in front of us.
This is why DHS is proudly producing videos showing people being brutalized to upbeat music, why their agents are concealing their identities to increase the terror and minimize the possibility of accountability, and why complicit Republicans refuse to even use the correct name for their ultimate target, members of the Democratic Party.
Back in the 1950s, Joe McCarthy advised Republicans never to use the actual name of the Democratic Party, but instead to slander them with a slur.
Never say Democratic Party, that sounds too nice, too democratic. Instead, always say "Democrat Party," with an emphasis on the "rat."
It’s why they’re flooding social media with celebrations of their violence, and why the millionaire talent on billionaire-owned Fox “News” are cheerleading them. It’s why Trump is openly talking about arresting Illinois’ Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson. It’s why his masked thugs tackled a US senator, arrested a congresswoman, and imprisoned the mayor of Newark, all with great fanfare.
If you think Democrats—including registered Democratic voters—aren’t next, you’re not paying attention. They’re already trying to make sure our votes aren’t counted; when that fails they’ll proceed to Miller’s step two and start dealing with us as “domestic extremists.”
The brutality, in other words, is the point. It’s not an accident, a side effect, or the result of poor training. It’s intentional. It’s a signal of their broader intentions. Following the classic dictator’s playbook.
And if we ever get used to it, G-d help America.
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