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If They Can’t Take Them From the Fields, They’ll Take Them From the Streets, and We'll Pay the Bill [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-17
A look at immigration: Trump's continuous lies about the obvious truths, Trump's threat to go after Democratic cities, and the huge cost this will place on the taxpayers.
Trump’s Latest Backtracking Lays Bare His Immigration Lies
Four-time indicted, twice-impeached, sexual assaulter, tax fraudster, insurrection inspirer, wannabe fascist dictator, convicted felon, Russian puppet Donald Trump campaigned on deporting the 11 million or so illegal immigrants in this country.
“Mass Deportation Now” read the signs that attendees at the Republican National Convention gleefully waved. Immigrants were criminals, subhuman, animals who were “poisoning the blood of our country.” Good riddance.
Of course, anyone with half a brain and an ounce of compassion realized the stupidity of this idea, given the massive cost, countless manhours, and logistical nightmares of removing 11 million people from this country, the vast majority of which don’t want to leave in the first place.
About 8.3 million U.S. workers in 2022 were undocumented immigrants, with a good-sized concentration in the agricultural and meatpacking industries. Undocumented immigrants paid about $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes that same year.
What do you think is going to happen if all these folks just disappeared?
Sure enough, we had another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) order from the president last week when Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials were told to pause raids and arrests in the agriculture, hotel, and restaurant industries, the New York Times reported.
A memo from a senior ICE official said, “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants, and operating hotels.”
But wait, then on Monday Reuters, citing a Washington Post report, said the Department of Homeland Security told staff that day that it was reversing the guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants.
What the hell kind of government are these people running here? This president does more about faces that a military unit out on marching drills.
Let’s go back to the last week’s directive. The email said agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals.” These are people who are undocumented but hadn’t committed a crime, the Times said. That’s an important point to remember.
Trump and his allies have characterized undocumented immigrants as dangerous criminals, even though immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than Americans and undocumented immigrants commit them at a lower rate than legal immigrants.
Still, the government has gone after immigrants of all stripes, not just those with criminal records, after White House Deputy Chief of Staff/hatemonger/extremely strange individual Stephen Miller lost his mind over what he saw as the slow pace of deportations, causing him to demand a minimum of 3,000 arrests per day.
The lies are so clear now. Trump couldn’t do the volume of deportations he was promising without going after not just immigrants who commit crimes, but also law-abiding undocumented individuals who are contributing members of society.
He couldn’t get rid of all undocumented immigrants like he promised without gutting the agricultural and hospitality businesses, so he, at least temporarily, put a hold on going after those folks. Trump even admitted that his mass deportation campaign was hurting American farmers and the hospitality business, the Times said.
Immigration is just another in a list of cons Trump perpetrated in order to get elected. Unfortunately, too many people bought his obvious lies, and now the country is paying for it.
You can read the Times story here.
Trump Points His Jack-Booted Thugs Toward American Cities
Take a look at this deranged Truth Social post by Donald Trump.
Whether it’s from criticism of him temporarily backing down on arresting immigrants working in the agricultural and hospitality industries, his need to reassert his manhood after his pathetic military parade, or just the ramblings of a racist, power-drunk fool, Trump is telling us that his assault on American cities will continue and probably increase.
Notice that his hateful attacks against Democrats come right after the shootings in Minnesota that killed a Democratic lawmaker and her husband and severely injured one of her colleagues and his wife.
This message is pure insanity. The vicious ramblings of a sick mind.
It’s also terrifying. There’re millions of people in this country, including multiple armed militias, who are members of Trump’s cult. This kind of message only amplifies their hate and increases the likelihood of violence.
With the No Kings events coming up, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe, a Republican, declared a state of emergency on Thursday and activated the state’s National Guard in anticipation of protests across the state, The Hill reported.
I know what you’re asking: How can you declare a state of emergency when there’s no emergency? Kehoe said he was also responding to “civil unrest” across the country, and that his order is purely precautionary.
No, it’s purely performative. A pathetic thuglike effort to intimidate protestors when they haven’t done anything wrong. Besides, if there are problems they could likely be handled by state and local law enforcement.
Missouri House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, a Democrat, said in a statement that “Governor Kehoe’s preemptive declaration of a state of emergency as Missourians prepare to protest an increasingly authoritarian presidential administration is a blatant attempt to intimidate and suppress First Amendment rights.”
No doubt.
You can read the Hill’s story here.
This is the game they play. The party that embraces violence wants you to believe it’s their political opponents who are the dangerous, violent crowd. It won’t work. We’ve seen too much to not see through the bullshit.
We’ve seen Trump’s gestapo wearing masks and grabbing up people, security personnel roughing up and arresting a United States senator at a news conference when he tried to ask a question, the calling out of the National Guard and U.S. Marines in Los Angeles for no good reason, and right-wing fanatics and goons attacking the Capitol, only to be pardoned by our criminal president.
We all know Trump is spoiling for violence, hoping for a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act and turn the military lose on the American people so he can further impose his will on our country.
There’s no reason to not believe Trump’s assault on immigrants in our cities won’t get more frequent, meaner, crueler. He’s holding a match inches away from the wick of a powder keg, and he’s hoping it explodes.
We’d all be advised to prepare ourselves for when it goes off.
Looks Like Taxpayers Will Be Footing an Even Bigger Bill For Trump’s Deportation Dream
Deporting the 11 million undocumented migrants that Donald Trump has somehow convinced his followers – against common sense – that he can do isn’t going to be cheap.
But don’t worry, the Republicans’ proposed budget bill that will add more than $2 trillion to our deficit over 10 years, cut taxes – mainly for the rich – by about $4.5 trillion over that same period, and bring significant cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and Medicare, includes ample extra funding for the administration’s reign of terror against migrants and its accompanying military takeovers of major cities.
A piece on the American Prospect website titled, “The Big Beautiful Bill Will Bring Ice Raids to Your City” lays this out.
The legislation includes “a surge of money that will go to immigration enforcement” that would “enable more ICE raids, more provocations, and more opportunity to seize more power,” the report said.
Here are some parts of the bill noted by the American Prospect article:
*The House version provides $151.3 billion in additional revenues for immigration agencies. As for the Senate, the Judiciary Committee’s budget resolution has targets that would raise that number even higher.
$45 billion will go for building new detention centers – a 364 percent annual increase to the construction budget that would increase available detention beds to at least 125,000, almost as much as the entire federal prison system.
*$27 billion for enforcement and deportation, enough to hire 10,000 more ICE officers – those thugs in the masks grabbing people off the streets – over the next five years.
*About a third of the money would go to border wall construction.
*There’s just a small increase for the budget of the immigration court system, thus increasing the existing backlog and ensuring prolonged detention.
The story offered this:
“So, if you don’t like the snatch-and-grabs you’re seeing in Los Angeles, be warned that the Big Beautiful Bill will bring those raids and detentions to your city. The enforcement apparatus being directed by White House ‘border czar’ Tom Homan and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller will have much more resources to carry out operations across the country.”
Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
You can read the American Prospect story here.
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