President Trump got elected not once, but twice, on the backs of illegal immigrants. 

But what he has done is so far from what he has said that you may be shocked to know the truth.

Today, there are about the same number of illegal immigrants working in America as there were in 2017 when then-candidate Trump said they were rapists and murderers, and the worst of the worst. He said other countries were emptying their prisons to send their worst people to America (a claim that remains entirely evidence-free.)

And then he built the wall that Mexico would pay for (it would not) and that would stop the illegals from getting into the country (it did not.) At the end of Trump’s first administration there were no fewer illegals than when he took office (Pew Research Center.)

So, what is behind the curtain? What explains the extreme rhetoric this administration uses about immigrants who are mostly brown-skinned and the actual deportations, which are largely performative and not significant?

Performative politics based upon white Americans false beliefs that brown-skinned people were taking their jobs fueled Trump’s rhetoric. 

Candidate Trump saw that this animosity towards the poorest people in the America’s resonated with an important voting demographic, unhappy Americans with their own economic circumstances. That demographic has continued to expand, even as Trump’s policies have expanded the gap created by Americans falling out of the middle class.

Consequently, in 2024, candidate Trump once again evoked anger from Americans not toward solutions to their problems, but with continued attack of those illegals et al as the true problem.

But, beyond the performative aspects of the 238 men deported to a hellhole prison in El Salvador, and the recent rushed building of a detention center (read brutal prison here) Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades, the newly empowered ICE folks have struggled to deport any more people than the Biden administration and far fewer than the Obama administration.

And, notwithstanding the very public misuse of our military in California, the Home Depot raids and the videos of ICE agents chasing farm workers through tomato fields, deportations are not really changing. Just recently the president who promised to eject all 12 million illegal immigrants said he would not seek to deport farm workers or hotel workers whose employers needed their labor.

Mr. Trump has found his personal “sweet spot” on his core re-election issue, to talk in brutal terms about these people, making them less than human and easy to hate, while, at the same time ignoring their presence because America both needs these workers and their jobs have not proven to take American jobs, according to E-Verify studies.

History can teach us lessons in the present. As far back as the 1940s, immigration officials would ease back on enforcement during agricultural seasons. As recently as 1999, a study found that a need for workers in agricultural, construction, and meatpacking caused enforcement to be curtailed. Since the 1990s and through 2022, legal and unauthorized workers have comprised about two-thirds of all agricultural workers. Everything stays the same, but for the racist rhetoric espoused by the current administration.

What has also not changed is that Congress has not revised our immigration policies, creating a litany of issues that demand attention around fair and legal paths to citizenship for those who only came here seeking better lives.

They all deserve better than Alligator Alcatraz for their actions.

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.