Marty Levine
June 12, 2025
Tuesday night saw mass protests against Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown spread across the country. Here’s how Block Club Chicago described the scene in my city:
The marches, which grew from a few hundred people early in the afternoon to tens of thousands by sundown, started in Federal Plaza but snaked everywhere from Grant Park to high-end eateries south of the Chicago River, as onlookers sat rapt while a seemingly unending sea of protesters streamed by.
Chicago’s peaceful protests were mirrored by similar gatherings and marches in cities across the country. Whether they were small gatherings at sites where ICE forces were in the process of detaining (accosting) people on the streets, at schools or places of work, or focused protests at sites where ICE was processing those they had scooped up. At mass marches, like in Chicago, they were indications of the widespread unhappiness with the Trump Administration’s aggressive effort to throw those seeking a better life out of our nation.
The strategy that the Administration has chosen is designed to sow. Surprise raids by armed, masked, and often unidentified agents, which seek to sweep people away to detention locations with no prior warning or legal authority or paperwork, are meant to separate people from their friends, neighbors, and support systems so that they will be unable to challenge these often illegal action. The indiscriminate nature of who is being detained demonstrates that Trump’s original promise that he was going to focus on deporting “criminals” was as untrue as many words that come from his lips. Criminal or not, long term resident or not, tax-paying worker or not, connected member of a community or not, everyone who looks or sounds like an “alien” is being targeted.
If this is not aimed at violent criminals then what is the purpose of this chaos?
On the day he was sworn in last January, President Trump issued an executive order explaining what he was asking his administration to do.
Over the last 4 years, the prior administration invited, administered, and oversaw an unprecedented flood of illegal immigration into the United States. Millions of illegal aliens crossed our borders or were permitted to fly directly into the United States on commercial flights and allowed to settle in American communities, in violation of longstanding Federal laws.
Many of these aliens unlawfully within the United States present significant threats to national security and public safety, committing vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans. Others are engaged in hostile activities, including espionage, economic espionage, and preparations for terror-related activities. Many have abused the generosity of the American people, and their presence in the United States has cost taxpayers billions of dollars at the Federal, State, and local levels.
Many of those who make up those “millions” are fleeing life-threatening conditions in their home countries and seek to be granted asylum, as defined by law:
In the US, asylum is a form of protection granted to individuals who have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country, allowing them to remain in the US instead of being deported. This protection is based on persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
The process of seeking asylum should allow an individual to make their case before an immigration judge, who then independently determines if their fear is justified. The system of immigration justice has been sorely underfunded, so this process is slow, with millions of asylum seekers waiting for months, even years, for a final determination. And while they wait, they are legally able to remain in our country, and they can become well-integrated members of their community.
Whether or not their claim is found to be creditable, they are not criminals.
The same is true of the hundreds of thousands of migrants from countries like Haiti and Venezuela who had been granted temporary legal status because of the failure of democratic institutions in their nation of origin. These were people not here to commit crimes, but to protect themselves and their families, while a permanent status could be adjudicated or conditions in their homeland could improve and remove the threat they feared. So, when Trump erased the orders his predecessor had issued granting legal status to remain here, it was not about criminality.
It is also not about these people being too costly. Migrants want to work and will work if given the ability to do so. They make up a key portion of the workforce in industries that otherwise will have trouble finding enough workers. Healthcare organizations, construction, agriculture and the hotel industry all rely heavily on migrants. And when they are allowed to work, they pay taxes and contribute to a social security system they may never be able to benefit from.
They contribute far more than we give through assistance programs, they may benefit from. Our President should know this because a study he commissioned during his first term about the cost of our refugee program told him it was not what he thought. Here’s how the NY Times described the study’s findings:
Trump administration officials, under pressure from the White House to provide a rationale for reducing the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year, rejected a study by the Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.
I do not know what is rattling about Trump’s brain, what he actually thinks he is doing. But it appears that for him and his rabid supporters, it is all about those whom he thinks are just not “American”. And by this, it appears he means White and Christian.
Here are Trump’s words from a 2017 statement, as reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center, about his desire to protect the purity of our nation:
The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?” — July 6, 2017, Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland
The clearest indicator of this is his rapid granting of refugee status, after shutting down entry to this country of almost 140,000 men, women and children who had already been vetted by our government and deemed to be refugees, to white South African people because of their claimed fear of anti-white bias in their home country.
Asked directly on Monday why the Afrikaners’ refugee applications had been processed faster than other groups, Trump said a “genocide” was taking place and that “white farmers” specifically were being targeted.
White and Christian, fast-tracked. Brown or Muslim rounded up, demonized, and barred.
It seems that clear that this is the America that Trump’s policies are designed to recreate.
Trump is also very thin-skinned. Protesting is taken personally. Trump sees himself as above the law and as the law-giver. He is, in his own mind, as powerful as Putin or other dictators.
He cannot tolerate that many of us think he is dead wrong about our country. And we want our voices to be heard and our bodies to be counted. We take to the streets to express that voice.
That provokes our president. And he wants to shut us up and do it forcefully, like those dictators he seems to admire. His sending troops to Los Angeles is designed to demonstrate how powerful he is. It is designed to scare people away from the streets. And it is designed to provoke demonstrators to escalate (or appear to escalate) their protest by practicing civil disobedience. The more physical he can make the confrontation, the better, he thinks. He wants the confrontation because he thinks it will justify his rationale. So, he provokes and blusters:
Speaking to reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office, Trump said he was unaware of plans to protest the parade but said “these are people that hate our country.”
“For those people who want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force,” Trump said.
“I haven’t even heard about a protest, but, you know, this is people that hate our country,” he said.
Mix Trump’s need to prove he is as powerful as he fears we see him as impotent, with his hatred of those whom he can define as “other”, as less than, and we have the current moment. He is the President. He is surrounded by a coterie of sycophants who seek his praise and the gifts he can bestow. And they do this at any cost. And thus, we have a man ready to blow this country up so he can show off his muscles.
I was reminded this morning that on Wednesday night our President attended a performance of Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center. I hope he listened very carefully to the cast when they burst into song and told him to “Hear The People…”
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again.
Unfortunately, I fear that a man like our President is unable to understand the irony of this moment, nor can he open his ears (or his heart) to hear his people. For him, “his people” are only those who agree with him; the rest of us, no matter how many we are, are neither “his” nor are we “people.”
What comes when a despot cannot hear the people? I shudder to think about that.
