Two years of Trump’s anti-immigration tactics have put marginalised groups in peril – another couple will create complete devastation

On the anniversary of his inauguration, it’s clear that as long as the current president is in charge, things are going to be scary for brown people, LGBT+ people, religious minorities and women

It’s been two long years since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States of America. Since January 2017 when the 45th president took office, people in the US and the international community have watched this administration’s backtracking on civil human and rights, and international law, as well as a deadly polarisation of US society and the emboldening of white supremacist groups and their anti-immigration agendas, spurred on by implicit and explicit support from the White House.

Trump ran for office on a hardcore populist, racist, anti-immigration platform that his base feverishly supported with their torches in hand. Blaming Muslims and Mexicans for white America’s problems resonated with millions of people – to the shame, shock and terror of many other Americans like myself.

Trump tapped deep into the fears and hatred of angry white people; he told them who to blame for their woes. And his base was quick to accept his proposed solutions. Cages, walls and religious-based bans all sounded like great ideas to Republicans and Trump supporters. Sounds a lot like the beginnings of Nazi Germany to me.

Of course, some folks I’ve spoken with about why they voted for Trump insist they only did so because of his being an “outsider to Washington politics” and his vows to “drain the swamp” – but I have always found that argument hard to believe.

The truth is much nastier and closer to home; anti-immigration rhetoric and policy has been a hallmark of this administration, and that, unfortunately, is what his supporters voted for – even if some still can’t admit it out loud.

But how far has Trump really come in fulfilling his promises and how far will he take things in order to get his way? Let’s take a look at the facts.

On 20 December 2018, Trump refused to sign a stopgap spending bill that had already been approved by the Senate, because it didn’t include money for additions to the border wall he had campaigned so hard for (and that Mexico was supposedly going to pay for).

This presidential temper tantrum has now turned into the longest government shutdown in US history and it doesn’t look like progress will be made anytime soon. Late yesterday, President Trump offered what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called “tepid” remedies for recipients of Temporary Protected Status (TPA) and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). But Democrats are already saying that isn’t going to get him his wall.

As for the effects on the immigration process, Chicago-based civil rights and immigration attorney Christina Abraham told me the shutdown has “completely stalled the legal process for migrants – with immigration courts only hearing cases where people are currently in detention. This means that all the other immigration cases are being pushed back in an already backlogged system.

“For example, before the shutdown immigration case hearings were already being scheduled one and a half to two years out, and now people will have to wait even longer. And even though immigration courts are hearing detention cases, because of the reduced workforce the detention cases are being handled even slower. After the shutdown is finally over there will be even more catching up to do.”

It seems blatantly obvious to everyone but Trump that Mexico was never going to pay for the wall – not the past administration, nor the current one. Whether or not this was a surprise to him is beyond me, but the president and his public relations team had to provide some kind of explanation to his base.

On 2 January of this year, he tweeted that the replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), would pay for it. But according to experts at PolitiFact that’s just not true; congress hasn’t even approved the new trade deal and there are no new tariffs on Mexican exports, nor is the issue contemplated in the agreement at all.

And, while many Democrats agree that there is a need for extra security measures to control irregular migration from the southern US border, they seem unwilling to move on funding additions for Trump’s wall.

Trump’s most inhumane immigration legacy to date remains the thousands of Central American children literally ripped away from their parents, locked in cages in tent cities on the border, shivering under foil blankets and vulnerable to sexual assault, and even death, while in custody.

Now, we are finding out that this administration has separated thousands more children from their parents and held them for even longer periods of time than was previously believed. In an article published in December on Independent Voices, I talked about how this administration has profited off the detention of migrants. Considering the dividends to be made by the for-profit immigration detention industry, it is unlikely that the practice will slow down or stop while Trump is in office.

It’s not that difficult to predict what our future holds under this administration. As long as this country has a white supremacist, misogynistic autocrat in the White House things are going to be scary for brown people, LGBT+ people, religious minorities and women.

We must look to the legacies left to us by Malcolm X and Dr Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Sitting Bull and other notable civil and human rights activists from this country that have dared to stand up to the forces of the American government when injustice, corruption and ineptitude prevailed.

It is clearly time to take to the streets again and demand that America return to its former glory, the glory that the Statue of Liberty stands for, the glory that made this nation so great – its policy of open arms to people who want to better themselves and their lives, and better the country in the process. Otherwise we are no longer a nation of “liberty and justice for all”.