Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Rounding Up Deportees

Who are all these dear friends scattered like dry leaves?
The radio said they were just deportees 

(“Deportee,” by Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman)

The first week of the Trump administration has brought so many different kinds of actions that it is easy to feel overwhelmed, but if we examine them individually, the overall patterns become clearer.

The most dramatic events so far are the so-called mass deportation raids occurring in multiple cities across the land. These are made-for-TV events involving teams of federal agents in full regalia swooping in to seize people who do not offer resistance. 

Initial reports indicate half of those being deported have no criminal record.

Friendly media are invited along on these raids — in Chicago, Dr. Phil was embedded with one team, playing the roles of jury, judge and executioner — “Lock him up,” he instructed the agents on his team.

These splashy arrests are predicated on Trump’s repeated claim that undocumented immigrants are responsible for a violent crime wave in U.S. cities. So let’s look at the facts.

First, violent crime is falling in the U.S., not rising.

According to the best estimates I can find, around 8 percent of Americans (including the President) are convicted felons, while that rate among undocumented immigrants is under 3 percent. A comprehensive study by the National Institute of Justice found that in Texas, from 2012-2018, undocumented immigrants were arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.[1]

Translating these numbers into plain English, American citizens are roughly three times more likely than undocumented immigrants to commit a felony, so if the goal was actually to combat crime, Trump, Dr. Phil and the rest of their reality TV show cast would be better advised to start rounding up their friends and neighbors.

Of course, then they would then have to face up to the embarrassing, unprecedented fact that the guy occupying the White House has 34 felony counts on his own rap sheet.

Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, probably the least qualified and the drunkest Secretary of Defense in history, made his presence known by declaring one of his top priorities will be eliminating any transgender people who may serving in our country’s armed forces.

The best estimate is this involves about 15,000 individuals out of over 2 million military personnel, so he’s talking about targeting around three-quarters of one percent of the workforce, including some highly-trained specialists.

Is this supposed to make America safer? Maybe we can ask Hegseth the next time he sobers up. 

Two things about this Trump crowd are clear — they are terrible at math, and they have an utter lack of compassion for people different than themselves. 

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