Thursday, 23 January 2025

And then what?

 

Many of Trump’s early Executive Orders have been to do with the rounding up and deportation of undocumented immigrants. He and his supporters claim that it will be the biggest round up and deportation in history. If they actually succeed in deporting people in the numbers being suggested, it will indeed be the biggest deportation in history. Whether it’s the biggest round up is more questionable: it may well be the biggest in terms of absolute numbers, but maybe not in terms of the ratio of those rounded up to the total population. My recollection of history tells me that there was a very big round up of people carried out on the European mainland towards the end of the first half of the last century, and, although I haven’t done a detailed calculation of the numbers, I suspect that it was proportionately larger in relation to the total population within the parts of Europe concerned.

That same recollection of history also tells me that forcing people to register (another of Trump’s proposals) and then detaining them were the comparatively straightforward part of the exercise; the difficulty came in knowing what to do with them once detained. It’s a matter of historical fact that Hitler’s proposal to rid the European mainland of Jews was initially about ‘encouraging’ people to leave, and was then followed up by proposals for mass deportation, including a scheme to transport 4 million Jews to Madagascar. It was a tall order, even in the days when imperial powers could and did simply transfer territories and their population between each other (although, as Trump reminded us recently, those days have not entirely been relegated to history, in the minds of some at least), and the scheme was eventually abandoned as being too difficult to implement. Short term, the only option was the building of detention camps where those arrested could be isolated from the rest of society, and in a not-at-all-strange parallel, Trump has already ordered the military to start building detention camps.

Actually deporting people is not as easy as it sounds, let alone as easy as Trump’s rhetoric suggests. There has to be some sort of agreement with the governments of the countries designated to receive the deportees; they can’t simply be dumped on the tarmac of an airport, or driven over the border at gunpoint, especially if the border patrols on the other side are telling them to stay put at gunpoint. And ‘undocumented’ covers a wide range of possibilities – being of obvious Hispanic origin, for instance, isn’t the same as being provably Mexican, and even if Mexico agreed to take its own citizens back, that leaves an awful lot of other people whose nationality remains unestablished. And then there are the legal processes to be gone through; American justice grinds extremely slowly at the best of times, and even attempts to remove all legal protection will themselves be subject to legal challenges.

In the meantime, many people – perhaps millions, in Trump’s wildest dreams – will find themselves in a sort of limbo in detention camps, and the US Government will find itself paying for food, clothing, security, and what passes for ‘housing’ for an indefinite period, whilst the absence of people who were making a contribution to the economy causes problems of its own outside the camps. What would the government do with them? In the historical parallel which I mentioned earlier, those responsible for detaining people alighted on alternative ‘solutions’ involving either forced labour or physical annihilation. I can’t bring myself to believe that even Trump would opt for the second of those, but I wouldn’t be so quick to rule out some sort of system of forced labour, even if only to fill some of the gaps in the economy which the detentions create. He’s more likely to follow the Putin model than the Hitler one, and if he manages to grab Canada and/or Greenland, he would even find it easier to mimic Siberian conditions. And cheap, non-unionised labour isn’t something that many of his billionaire friends are likely to refuse in a hurry.

No doubt many of his MAGA supporters will cheer him on whatever he does – and the crueller the better. For those detained, it’s a nightmare. Optimistically, it would end in four years’ time with a new president. But if Trump succeeds in extending his reign – or ensuring that there is an anointed successor (maybe even turning the presidency, effectively, into a hereditary position), there is no obvious way out for them. I somehow doubt that Trump has thought this through at all; most of what he does seems to be based on very short timescales. As always, it will be the most vulnerable who suffer.

3 comments:

Gav said...

Right now Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde is my hero.

Jonathan Edwards said...

Yes, we can treat Trump and Hitler just the same. By their fruits shall ye know them. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, and told us what his plans were. Trump has also told us what his plans are, at length just this week, many speeches and 1.5hrs on 'Hannity' so its not hard
(1) He is very conscious that time is not on his side. He has a small majority in Congress and must score some points quickly, by Whitsun 2025. He thinks he could lose the House in November 2026 if he doesn't. (The recognised US timescale)
(2) He thinks that many deportees are low-hanging fruit and that, in his short timescale, he and Tom Homan ought to deport many illegals with the support of 70%+ of Americans. Say 1m bad guys ie the ones in custody now or who get arrested soon, for serious offences.
(3) Trump is already eyeing an Amnesty. The reasons are obvious. Support for deportation will not survive tv footage of the not-so-low fruit being deported. Many illegals have been in the US for ages, have 'birthright' children and pay taxes, as he is the first to agree.
In other words, Borthlas, Trump is a lot like the Democrat he used to be and will go for the middle ground. He knows illegals, has employed them on building sites and he wants Hispanic support for a unified country going towards sunlit uplands with high growth. No wonder actual Americans including Hispancs voted for him as they did. They go by what he actually says. Clue, this is not at all the same as what CNN reports and feeds across the Atlantic

John Dixon said...

Jonathan,

I'm not sure about "Trump is already eyeing an Amnesty". I haven't seen that reported and it wouldn't go down well with the MAGA base. I'd like to believe "Support for deportation will not survive tv footage of the not-so-low fruit being deported", but I'm not entirely convinced that such footage wouldn't lead to dancing in the streets in some of the red states.

I certainly agree with "He knows illegals, has employed them on building sites...", but I'm not sure that he doesn't think that there's a difference between what he does and what others should be allowed to do. In fact, I'm quite certain that he sees a big difference there; some things are only wrong when they're done by other people. And whether what he is doing will actually lead to high growth remains to be seen. Whilst I'm generally something of a sceptic when it comes to economists, it's still worth noting that most of them believe that tariffs and trade barriers are more likely to stifle growth than encourage it.

Whether we should believe that he will do what he says he will do is another area of doubt, not least because what he says isn't always entirely consistent. Even some of those closest to him don't always believe that he'll do what he says he'll do. Take the amnesty for the insurrectionists: he said that he'd free them all, but his vice-president said that those who had violently attacked police officers would not be released. It turned out that the VP was wrong; Trump did exactly what he said he was going to do in that case.

I'd really like to believe that, ultimately, he "will go for the middle ground", but I'm not seeing a lot at the moment which encourages me to believe that.