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Returning the Statue of Liberty? [1]
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Date: 2025-01-22
With Trump as President, will France want the U.S. to return the Statue of Liberty? (The French probably wish they could return the ambassador that Trump sent them: Charles Kushner, convicted felon and father of Jared.) The monument, known as “Liberty Enlightening the World” (La Liberté éclairant le monde), was intended to commemorate 1776, the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence. The statute was dedicated in 1886 due to delays in completing it. Importantly, Lady Liberty symbolized the close relationship between the two countries and their shared values of liberty, democracy, and freedom.
Emma Lazarus wrote her sonnet, “The New Colossus,” in 1883 to help raise money for the pedestal on which the statue sits on Liberty Island. A plaque of her poem was placed on the pedestal in 1903.
In 1892, Ellis Island, a third of a mile from Liberty Island, began operating as the nation’s primary immigration station. Immigrants aboard ships coming to America passed the Statue of Liberty before arriving at Ellis Island. The words of Lazarus, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” transformed Lady Liberty into a symbol of welcome and refuge.
But, on Day One of his new term, Donald Trump made it clear that America is no longer a safe harbor for refugees, those legally applying for asylum, people of color who have lawfully immigrated, or undocumented immigrants. Four years ago, his attempt on January 6th to remain in power showed his disdain for democracy as he refused to support the peaceful transfer of power. Even now, he continues to spread the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election. Trump has departed so far from those shared values of liberty, democracy, and freedom.
Yesterday, his administration shut down the CBP One app just minutes after Trump took the presidential oath. The app allowed people to schedule a meeting with immigration officials so they could enter the U.S. legally. Since its launch, 900,000 people have entered using the app. Trump canceled up to 30,000 scheduled appointments and stopped 270,000 who were trying to get appointments. This legal avenue is gone.
Trump ended the Humanitarian Parole Program for those fleeing Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, affecting over a half million migrants who had been allowed to stay in the U.S. for up to two years and work. It seems likely that Trump will eject all 15,000 Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, destroying the city economically.
Trump issued an Executive Order refusing to recognize the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants as citizens as part of his effort to end birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. He has called these infants “anchor babies” because they allow families to remain connected to America. As of yesterday, he has been sued over this by the Attorneys General of 23 states. He also ended Biden’s Family Reunification Task Force, which had been reuniting children who Trump had separated during his first administration. Some 1,000 children still have not been reunited with their parents—Trump’s Family Values!
Trump also barred asylum for people newly arriving at the southern border, suspended the Refugee Admissions Program, resumed a policy requiring people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while an immigration judge considers their cases, and considered designating cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations” so he can use the U.S. military to pursue them into Mexico. He also ordered the resumption of building the border wall with funds that he could designate rather than depending on Congress to provide them. This will also allow him to use the military in supporting the work to secure the border.
In one proclamation, Trump declared the situation at the southern border “an invasion,” and in another proclamation declared migrant crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border to be a national emergency.
For Trump, immigrants at our Southern border are sub-human; they do not have rights. He kept them in cages in his first term and will do it again. You have heard the language that he has used to describe them: “criminals,” “rapists,” “animals,” “not human,” “not people,” “stone-cold killers,” “monsters,” “vile animals,” “savages,” “low IQ individuals,” “predators,” and an “infestation.” Now, by immigrants, Trump is talking about people of color. He is not talking about the 226 Norwegians who were granted permanent residency in the U.S. in 2022—nice, white people.
It is worth remembering that Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) into law on November 6, 1986, which provided a pathway to amnesty for undocumented immigrants who had been in the U.S. for four years or more. He did it because those people were contributing members of society. Of course, Reagan knew that immigration was America’s secret weapon—renewing and revitalizing the country.
Trump plans to launch mass deportations. He will surely ignore the legal rights of deportees because, for Trump—who is above the law thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, but not above crime—the default is always to ignore the law. He will be assisted in this when the House of Representatives passes the Senate’s amended Laken Riley Act. The act broadens the criteria for expedited removal, a process allowing immigration officials to deport individuals without a hearing before an immigration judge—if there is no rule of law, why should there be due process? Is this how liberty dies?
Trump and his Border Czar, Tom Homan, have talked about deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. According to The Washington Post (see
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/interactive/2025/trump-immigrants-mass-deportations/), that would be about 650,000 people—not millions. Of these, 435,719 are already in federal or state prison and will be deported when their sentences are complete. The other 226,847 noncitizens have pending charges like drunken driving or driving without a license, drug crimes, and immigration violations.
The next group, per Homan, is the 1.4 million undocumented immigrants who have received deportation orders after failing to qualify for legal status in the United States. However, according to the Post, half of them are not eligible for deportation because they have been granted a reprieve or deferral by ICE since their home countries won’t take them back or they are likely to face persecution.
Some of these 1.4 million are part of about 8 million on ICE’s “non-detained docket”—immigrants who are potentially eligible for deportation and remain in some stage of court proceedings. ICE knows where they are, but they are not easy to deport because their cases have not been fully adjudicated. About 5.8 million of the 8 million arrived under Biden’s watch, and Trump would really like to deport them. Another 1 million immigrants are here on Temporary Protected Status (TPS). As above, another 600,000 are here under Humanitarian Parole, which Trump has canceled for people like the Haitians in Springfield. It should be obvious that Trump is not a humanitarian.
While Trump made a lot of immigration smoke on his first day in office, Border Czar Homan is tamping down expectations with Republican lawmakers because there is not the money, workforce, or infrastructure to conduct mass deportations. As he did in his first term with infrastructure, Trump may be over-promising and under-delivering.
Of course, we should secure our Southern border and stop illegal immigration, but Trump wants to go much further. He will also stop legal immigration there because, for Trump, if a person’s skin is brown or black, they are not welcome in Trump’s White America.
The Statue of Liberty once symbolized America’s values of freedom, democracy, and refuge. However, under Trump’s leadership, these ideals are being trashed. Policies targeting immigrants and refugees contrast starkly with the inclusive message of Emma Lazarus’s poem and the statue’s historical symbolism. The question of whether France might want to reclaim the Statue of Liberty is rhetorical, but it underscores a deeper reflection: what does America stand for today? Under Trump, America no longer embraces the ideals of liberty and welcome that the statue embodies.
Time left to January 20, 2029: 1,459 days
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