Since colonial times, self-designated ‘communities’ have used expulsions to address supposed threats. It helps to explain how easy it has been for Trump to win support
The recent expulsion of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, a protected legal resident who had committed no offense, is only the latest example of the Trump administration’s unbounded efforts to detain and rapidly expel any immigrant, undocumented or not, who may come into its grasp.
Although expulsions – often known as deportations – of undocumented men, women and children have been regular features of life under Democratic as well as Republican presidents in recent years, those of the new administration have been jaw-dropping in their cruelty and utter defiance of federal law and judicial due process, in their heralded scale and in the lust with which they have been carried out. And we would be mistaken to believe that immigrants will be the only victims of what is in effect a widening campaign of political expulsion. After all, Trump has just requested a sixfold increase in funding for detention facilities.
Steven Hahn is professor of history at New York University and author, most recently, of Illiberal America: A History
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