🔗 Share this article

As the political power of Donald Trump diminishes and his public demeanor becomes more erratic, there has been an escalation in vitriolic attacks aimed at women in media and ethnic communities, including Somali immigrants being the latest target. The impact of these insults stems from their malice and his platform, not their factual accuracy. In a parallel manner, the government's actions against immigrants are haphazard and founded on falsehoods. The evidence makes it obvious that the goal extends beyond targeting individuals with criminal histories. The true target is people of color.

This includes Indigenous peoples carrying tribal IDs to American citizens by choice, from essential workers in building sites and hospitals to military veterans, university attendees, residents asleep in their beds, and very young children: a wide array of the country's population is under siege.

"Immigration enforcement raids are cruel, unjust and do nothing for community security," asserts a leading political figure from New York. Scenes featuring masked agents shattering windows and separating parents from children, terrorizing entire communities and hindering the function of institutions, undermines safety entirely.

The cycles of orchestrated bigotry—directed at people from Haiti in the 2024 campaign, Venezuelan migrants this spring, and most recently Somali Americans—lean heavily on defamatory falsehoods and slurs. This is because: the actual facts about these communities cannot support the animosity.

The Mythical White Nation and Historical Reality

This campaign of terror and demonization claims to seek at recreating a homogeneously white America which is a fiction. Although America had a larger white population in the youth of today's white supremacists, it never constituted a purely white nation. In 1776, the original thirteen colonies included a significant percentage of Black and Indigenous peoples—certain states in the South had Black populations exceeding a third.

When the United States expanded, taking Texas in the 1840s and acquiring northern Mexico in 1848, it incorporated a large Spanish-speaking population long established in the modern Southwest and California. Historical records show the first African Muslim in this land arrived with a Spanish exploration party almost one hundred years before the Mayflower Puritan passengers landed in Massachusetts in 1620.

Population Truths Versus Coercive Fantasies

The systematic targeting of vast numbers of people of color and attempts at large-scale expulsion cannot fabricate the all-white nation of far-right dreams. Los Angeles, for instance, is nearly half Latino, and despite enforcement outrages, arrests, and deportations, it remains so. Its name itself is Spanish, an enduring reminder of who was there first.

The entirety of this animus and oppression resembles the panic of racists who pretend they can halt the demographic future of a country that is ceasing to be majority-white by using pure cruelty.

It is coupled with an attack on abortion access that is, sometimes, explicitly designed to prompt Caucasian women to have more children. The argument points to a below-replacement birthrate in the US, a trend less impactful than in some other nations due to a hard-working population of immigrant laborers which keeps the economy functioning. Yet, instead of offering the social support that might make raising children easier, the approach is based on punishment and force.

A prominent journalist observes that the reproductive politics espoused by figures like JD Vance—coupled with derogatory comments toward childless women—constitute a form of pronatalism. This philosophy "usually combines worries about declining birth rates with opposition to immigration and anti-women's rights ideas."

Similarly, analyses show that "attempts to raise the birth rate do not compensate for broader policies designed to cut federal support programs like Medicaid and insurance for kids. The so-called 'pro-family' focus isn't merely about promoting having children. Instead, it is being weaponized to advance a conservative agenda that threatens women's health, bodily autonomy, and labor force involvement."

Contradictory Strategies and Widespread Resistance

Together, the anti-immigrant and pro-birth policies constitute an effort to artificially redirect the country's population future. In the end, both amount to foolish bullying by individuals filled with hatred who unintentionally demonstrate that their assertions of being better must be based on skin color and sex; without these constructs, their positions devolve into meaningless idiocy.

Much of the justification put forward by the administration fails to align with tangible facts and actual outcomes. As an instance, maritime attacks in the southern Caribbean often target tiny boats which are not proven to be transporting drugs and incapable of reaching US shores. Similarly, Venezuela's role in the fentanyl trade is negligible, and its involvement with cocaine is far less than that of neighboring countries on the continent.

The administration's stance extends to climate issues, with a rejection of "the science of climate change" and "carbon neutrality targets." An emotional commitment to coal and oil, particularly coal, resulting in measures that force communities to invest in outdated and polluting power sources while sabotaging cheaper, cleaner renewables. At the same time, public health leadership have promoted anti-scientific dietary schemes while weakening general public health safeguards.

The foundational assumption of the attacks on immigrants is that non-white individuals not born in the US are dangerous intruders. Yet, from coast to coast—from Los Angeles to Charlotte, Chicago to Portland—the government's own forces, the ICE and Border Patrol officers, whom local communities perceive as the dangerous and hostile interlopers.

No symbol is more powerful of the broad repudiation of these tactics than the countless individuals mobilizing, demonstrating, risking safety and arrest to protect their communities. City after city has stood up in protection of its people. No amount of derogatory language and threats can change that reality.