Trump uses Immigration to Implement Autocracy

For months I have been stressing in these posts that the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's actions against immigrants were the most obvious indications of Trump's autocratic intentions. Autocratic leaders generally don't start with head-on attacks on liberty. Rather, they begin on the margins, targeting the unpopular. They are able to normalize their methods before expanding their dictatorial rule. Trump promised that his administration would target violent criminals for deportation. The specter of undocumented residents who are threats to our communities being removed raised little opposition. But almost immediately, the same procedures were used against undocumented residents who had no criminal record.

Trump soon went after non-citizens who were legally in the United States and who had broken no laws whatsoever. Legal residents were seized off the street by masked government agents, whisked into unmarked cars, and secreted off to far-away detention centers. The government openly admitted that these individuals had committed no criminal acts or violations of civil law. I want to stress again that these were individuals who were legally in the country — including Green Card holders — who had done nothing illegal. This is the stuff of dictatorship. But Trump and his associates did not stop there.

The circle of Trump's authoritarianism expanded to include U.S. citizens. Simply exercising constitutionally guaranteed rights in opposition to Trump's autocratic actions has been deemed by the Trump administration to be illegal. This development was covered very well in today's New York Times where Dara Lind has a guest essay titled, "When Rights Erode for Some of Us, Something Corrodes in All of Us". As Lind writes, "It is impossible to act as if immigrants have no rights without, eventually, infringing on citizens’ rights to stand up for them." Lind lists a number of examples of U.S. citizens — often elected officials including U.S. Senators and Members of the U.S. House of Representatives — who have attempted to exercise their legal rights in defense of non-citizens and have been detained or arrested.

It is possible to believe that Trump is committed to large-scale deportations of noncitizens and that he is stretching — and at times exceeding — the bounds of the law in service of that goal. Alternatively, it can be argued — as I do — that immigration is simply a stalking horse, concealing Trump's true goal. I am not suggesting that Trump — or at least Trump officials such as World Class Hater Stephen Miller — doesn't have an authentic desire to conduct mass deportations. Rather, my argument is that Trump's ambitions don't stop there. He doesn't want his autocratic powers to simply cover immigration, but rather the full scope of our political system. He wants to rule by Sharpie, issuing edicts from the comfort of the Oval Office and squashing all opposition, if necessary, with force. Immigration has been an enabling justification.

In recent days, things have taken a much more ominous turn, providing additional support for my theory. In a series of events completely orchestrated by the White House, Trump ended up deploying U.S. Marines to Los Angeles, where they have already detained at least one U.S. citizen in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Instigated by Miller, who eviscerated immigration officials for not making enough arrests and demanded to know "Why aren’t you at Home Depot?", Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided a Home Depot in Paramount, California. This provoked demonstrations at the Home Depot, but also in downtown Los Angeles. These demonstrations were peaceful until police attacked the crowds. This inspired even larger demonstrations, leading Trump to deploy the California National Guard — without consulting California Governor Gavin Newsome — and then send in U.S. Marines. Both of these actions are likely illegal. The first has already been found as such by a federal judge, although he stayed his ruling, which has been appealed.

The government provoked violence and then used that to justify the implementation of military rule. This is straight out of the fascist handbook. We are talking about Hitler and the Reichstag level of actions. This is not military rule, you say? Well, who is calling the shots? It is not Governor Newsom, who was not even consulted. Nor is it Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who said, along with local police leaders, that no such deployment was necessary. Trump is in control of the National Guard and the Marines. If this is not convincing enough, rest assured that Attorney General Pam Bondi made things as clear as can be. In the same press conference in which U.S. Senator Alex Padilla was physically removed and handcuffed, Bondi said:

We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.

You may have thought that the National Guard and the Marines were in Los Angeles to help prevent violence. But, no, Bondi stresses, they are there to "liberate the city" from "this governor" and "this mayor". In other words, the military forces have been deployed to subvert the authority of democratically elected officials. This was, in effect, a military takeover.

Again, things didn't stop there. First, Trump posted on his Truth Social social media platform to say that "Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace." Therefore, Trump "truthed", "Changes are coming!" Soon, a leaked memo showed that ICE had been instructed to cease raids of farms, hotels, and leisure businesses. This demonstrates that concerns about undocumented immigration take second place to Republican interests. Yesterday, in another "truth", Trump reiterated his commitment to mass deportation, but this time wrote:

In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.

Trump is explicitly taking aim at the "Democrat Power Center" and directly tying his actions to elections. We can see where this is going. ICE will conduct aggressive operations — the now familiar heavily armed masked men in unmarked vehicles that look more like death squads or criminal gangs than legitimate law enforcement (and act more like it too) — in these cities and provoke demonstrations. Those, in turn, will be used to justify the introduction of National Guard and U.S. military forces. As Bondi says, this will result in the usurpation of state and local power. But Trump further telegraphs interference with elections, potentially using the allegation that undocumented residents are voting to sabotage elections in those and other Democratic cities. This could easily impact national elections. In a state like Illinois, for instance, a significant percentage of the state's Democratic votes comes from Chicago. If that vote failed to materialize due to Trump's interference, Illinois could potentially tip from blue to red. This would essentially make it impossible for a Democrat to win the presidency.

A very disappointing realization for me has been that the craziest "liberal" poster in DCUM's "Political Discussion" forum, the one who ranted non-stop about Project 2025 and the threat that Trump presented to democracy, was the poster who turned out to be the most prescient. His warnings about the dangers that Project 2025 and Trump presented have proven to be accurate. So crazy has Trump's second term been that simply trying to explain what he has done makes you sound like a lunatic. Now here I am trying to tell you that Trump is potentially using immigration as a Trojan horse to sway national elections and hoping that you don't recommend that I see a doctor about a prescription for Thorazine. Honestly, I would prefer that I am crazy because the alternative is much worse. But all indications are that we are on a very dangerous path.