Tomgram: Todd Miller, The Great Mexican Wall Deception
Courtesy of TomDispatch. Written by Todd Miller.
These days, we’re in what seems like an election campaign of one. It’s Trump vs. Trump. Does Hillary even exist? There’s conflicting evidence on that. If Trump loses, I suspect we'll all be able to say that never has a candidate trounced himself quite so efficiently. All his opponent evidently has to do is not give press conferences, stay out of the spotlight, and wait for Trump to tromp Trump.
At the moment, his polling figures are looking increasingly dismal and he's shaken up his campaign team (yet again!) — the Ukrainians having lost out to Breitbart News and American "nationalism." Still, The Donald rumbles on. He’s a figure the usual journalistic crew is essentially incapable of covering. For that, you need a coterie of cartoonists and, of course, New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz.
Only recently, for instance, The Donald gave a speech in which he suggested that a new Cold-War-style “ideological screening test” for immigrants be developed to keep… well, you know whom out. He’s referred to the process he imagines putting in place as “extreme vetting.” The goal, he says, is to ban those “who support bigotry and hatred” (of whom he perhaps feels we already have our fill without the aid of immigrants) and, above all, those “who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law.” He hasn’t yet suggested just what that screening test might be like, but TomDispatch has a few obvious suggestions.
The first question for any prospective immigrant would surely have to be: “Do you belong to ISIS?” The answer to that one will obviously eliminate many of the most dangerous potential infiltrators. You’d then follow up with the surefire extreme-vetting question: “Do you believe that Sharia law should be imposed on the United States?” And if that doesn’t eliminate the rest of the potential Islamic terrorists, you’d finish off the process with a trick question. Best suggestion at present: “Death to America: Yea or Nay?”
Those who pass will obviously be ready to receive their visas and, as The Donald so movingly puts it, “embrace a tolerant American society.”
Let me just add that Trump supporters shouldn’t feel complete despair if, in the course of this election campaign, The Donald goes down in electoral flames. As TomDispatch regular Todd Miller suggests in his latest report from the U.S.-Mexican border, when Hillary Clinton emerges from the shadows to take the oath of office, she will find herself presiding over far more Trumpian American borderlands than many of us might assume. And for that we’ll have to offer thanks not only to the inspiration of Trump but to the actions of two other figures on the American political landscape: Bill and Hillary Clinton. Tom
No Need to Build The Donald's Wall, It’s Built
Trump’s America Already Exists on the Border
By Todd MillerAt the federal courthouse, Ignacio Sarabia asks the magistrate judge, Jacqueline Rateau, if he can explain why he crossed the international boundary between the two countries without authorization. He has already pleaded guilty to the federal misdemeanor commonly known as “illegal entry” and is about to receive a prison sentence. On either side of him are eight men in the same predicament, all still sunburned, all in the same ripped, soiled clothes they were wearing when arrested in the Arizona desert by agents of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Once again, the zero tolerance border enforcement program known as Operation Streamline has unfolded just as it always does here in Tucson, Arizona. Close to 60 people have already approached the judge in groups of seven or eight, their heads bowed submissively, their bodies weighed down by shackles and chains around wrists, waists, and ankles. The judge has handed out the requisite prison sentences in quick succession — 180 days, 60 days, 90 days, 30 days.
On and on it goes, day-in, day-out. Like so many meals served in fast-food restaurants, 750,000 prison sentences of this sort have been handed down since Operation Streamline was launched in 2005. This mass prosecution of undocumented border crossers has become so much the norm that one report concluded it is now a “driving force in mass incarceration” in the United States. Yet it is but a single program among many overseen by the massive U.S. border enforcement and incarceration regime that has developed during the last two decades, particularly in the post-9/11 era.
Sarabia takes a half-step forward. “My infant is four months old,” he tells the judge in Spanish. The baby was, he assures her, born with a heart condition and is a U.S. citizen. They have no option but to operate. This is the reason, he says, that “I’m here before you.” He pauses.
Picture via Flickr.
