Ice is ramping up its racist raids to carry out Trump’s deportation plan
Donald Trump’s mass deportations programme isn’t just targeting migrants—it’s opened the door to round-ups of Indigenous, black and brown people in the United States.
The US president has demanded higher quotas for arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers. He wants the border guards to arrest at least 1,200 a day—up from around 300 a day.
Indigenous Americans are being swept up in Trump’s deportation raids. Members of the Navajo Nation, the largest Indigenous American group, have reported Ice officers targeting them because of the colour of their skin.
The national office for the Navajo Nation received a wave of calls from community members reporting being questioned about their identity by Ice officers.
Navajo president Buu Nygren said, “My office has received multiple reports from Navajo citizens that they have had negative, and sometimes traumatising, experiences with federal agents targeting undocumented immigrants in the Southwest.”
Trump is desperate to set the wheels turning for his far right agenda—and terrorising migrants is the spearhead. Rosanna Eugenio is legal director at the New York Immigration Coalition.
“It will create conditions where there will be profiling of communities, immigrant communities and communities of colour,” she said. This won’t come as a surprise to many—Ice has had a long history of racial profiling and is a deeply racist institution.
The deportation raids have been reported in cities across the US, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, San Diego, Phoenix and Dallas.
The round-ups come as Trump ordered the construction of a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay camp. He said it was for “the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
Guantanamo Bay, a part of Cuba occupied by the US, was infamous as a US torture camp during the War on Terror. The new facility would reportedly be able to house 30,000 people, doubling US detention capacity for migrants.
This isn’t a new practice. Guantanamo Bay has been used to detain migrants for decades, in the Guantanamo Migrations Operation Centre, operating through both Republican and Democrat administrations.
In a report last year, International Refugee Assistance Project attacked the “inhumane” conditions there. It slammed the US government for infinitely detaining migrants after detaining them at sea.
Trump’s racist round-ups are just the start. He plans other attacks such as denying the right to citizenship to the children of migrants, either in the US illegally or on temporary visas.
This plan is currently being challenged legally, but it will take mass resistance to stop Trump carrying out his agenda.
Racism first developed as a justification for enslavement
