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Daily Dispatch
October 23, 2019
“Zero Tolerance”
Last night Frontline aired a fascinating documentary on the roots of Trump’s immigration policies, and the particular way, as a candidate and as president, he has tapped into resentment about immigration in order to transform the Republican Party. The story, of course, does not start with Trump, but with Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions meeting at Bannon’s place to discuss how to kill a bipartisan immigration bill negotiated in 2012. They decide to go after the Republican Speaker of the House, Eric Kantur, who was facing a primary challenge. The drumbeat that Kantur was soft on immigration and selling out his constituents worked. Kantur became the first sitting Speaker to lose a primary. As a result other Republicans fled from the bipartisan bill, and it never made it out of the House. They then went looking for a presidential candidate. In Trump this group found an “imperfect” but effective vehicle for their message, and they all joined in to support his candidacy. As we know, their messaging worked, leading them all to take leadership roles in the administration once Trump took office - though only Miller remains.
You can watch the full documentary here. Keep a bucket close by, just in case...
Accompanying the documentary are additional resources, including this helpful summary of major immigration policy changes under the Trump administration.
Backlash
If you get through the Frontline documentary and feel down about how Trump’s rhetoric has seemed to transform the electoral landscape, there is some good news. There is an enormous backlash to his policies. And not surprisingly, much of this is coming from immigrants. Naturalized citizens cast 8 percent of the ballots in 2018 midterms, and more are registering. Indeed, even as new arrivals are falling off, naturalizations are increasing, as immigrants that have been here for years are seeking citizenship for both security and so they can vote. From the LA Times:
Surveys show that many of the new citizens are liberal-leaning, which is one of several demographic trends helping put some historically red states such as Texas, Arizona and Georgia closer to Democrats’ reach.
The gains in immigrants’ electoral strength have been gradual. But Trump’s anti-immigration policies may be accelerating the trend by spurring even more people to naturalize and to vote, worrying some moderate Republican experts.
“It’s not ‘bad-ish’ news. It’s extremely bad,” said Mike Madrid, a Sacramento-based GOP consultant who studies Latino voters. He thinks the party’s use of anti-immigrant rhetoric to mobilize non-college-educated white voters will come at a steep electoral price. “This is a five-alarm fire.”
Another study issued this week by Brookings shows that many new immigrants are moving to traditionally strong GOP states - even though overall numbers of new arrivals are down this year.
Environmental costs of border enforcement strategies
Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, ran an article Monday about the environmental destruction that has been wrought over the last twenty years of immigration enforcement efforts along the border with Mexico. The wall being simply the latest - as ground clearing operations proceed and destroy fragile ecosystems. Much of the destruction in Arizona, the focus of the article, has been caused by Border Patrol creating a dense network of tracks through the Cabeza Prieta National Park. An excerpt below, you can read the full article here.
A 2011 [Fish and Wildlife Service] report documented nearly 8,000 miles of roads created by Border Patrol agents and smugglers within Cabeza Prieta during the previous decade (traffic by smugglers has declined dramatically since the construction of vehicle barriers along the border in 2007 and 2008). The authors, who analyzed satellite data, noted that Border Patrol was responsible for “the greater proportion” of new roads and trails, which had created a “seemingly incalculable” web across the landscape. Meanwhile, in Organ Pipe, according to a recent NPS assessment of the park’s wilderness character, Border Patrol officers reported driving almost 17,000 miles through wilderness lands in 2015 alone.
But even those figures might be vastly underestimating Border Patrol’s impact. According to Sue Rutman, a botanist who worked at Organ Pipe from 1994 to 2013, the Park Service secretly monitored Border Patrol for several years to determine if the agency was faithfully documenting off-road use of wilderness areas as required by the 2006 agreement. Rutman said a Park Service analysis found that Border Patrol only filed reports about 25 percent of the time.
“There was a total lack of respect for the park and its resources,” Rutman said.
In a written statement, Border Patrol said that several hundred miles of unauthorized vehicle routes have been created in Organ Pipe “due to cross-border illegal activities.” The agency said that it does not track the exact miles traveled by border agents in wilderness areas.
Trump’s border wall represents the latest threat to the desert wilderness. Under the 2005 Real ID Act, part of the post-9/11 expansion of the national security state, DHS was given carte blanche to waive any laws that would interfere with efforts to secure the border. This is why the Trump administration was able to sidestep dozens of environmental laws, including the Wilderness Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, to move forward with constructing a 30-foot-tall impermeable barrier in parts of Cabeza Prieta and Organ Pipe.