Insufficient cruelty
by Tom Sullivan
Image from promo for The Strain, Season 3
Someone purporting to be president of the United States tweeted Sunday night:
“Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service. I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!”
In Donald Trump’s reality-show presidency, everyone is acting.
The New York Times reports Nielsen’s resignation came after she met with the sitting president on Sunday to find “a way forward” in their relationship, “in part thinking she could have a reasoned conversation with Mr. Trump,” according to three sources.
CBS News reports it is unclear whether Nielsen left on her own or was pressured to resign.
A senior official told CBS top Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller is driving a “massive DHS overhaul” of which Nielsen’s departure is one piece. Slate’s Daniel Politi adds the change comes days after Trump retracted the nomination of Ron Vitiello to head US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We’re going in a little different direction,” Trump said Friday. “Ron’s a good man but we’re going in a tougher direction. We want to go in a tougher direction.”
Trump in recent days has repeatedly threatened to close the southern U.S. border to stem the flow of migrants and asylum seekers from Central America.
Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, on the short list to become Trump’s white-nationalist “immigration czar,” told Lou Dobbs of Fox Business last week the U.S. should incarcerate asylum seekers awaiting processing in “camps” until they can be deported:
“Instead of selling [the thousands of empty mobile home trailers that the United States owns], deploy them to the border cities, and create processing towns that are confined,” Kobach said. “We process them right there, in that camp, where they have the three square meals, they’re living in a nice mobile home, and then as soon as they’re done … they’re on the next plane back home.”
The Bush administration had enough residual shame to hide its cruelties in black sites offshore. Confined to U.S. border camps, migrants might be less exposed to the elements but only slightly less exposed to the eyes of the world. Last week’s images of families with children and babies behind fencing and razor wire below the Paso del Norte Bridge in El Paso, Texas lent a gulag-ish look to a country once the self-styled leader of the free world.
It is a look gleefully cruel enough to cheer Trump’s white nationalist Republican base. Yet, it demonstrates to Trump his hirelings are not deporting the wretched refuse, the homeless, tempest-tost fast enough to prove he is Supreme Leader. Providing American support to Central American countries that might help stem the migrant flow at the source would be a rational person’s response. It is a non-starter for Trump because he sees no personal profit in the federal investment. And it might make Supreme Leader appear less tough.
Child separation was not enough for him. Tear gas was not enough. Zero tolerance was not enough. Like an addict needing more and stronger drugs, Trump, with Miller’s prompting, keeps upping his dose. Cruelty may be the point, but cruelty is not enough to scratch their itch, and Nielsen was not scratching hard and fast enough. One fears where this trajectory leads next.
He’d send back the robed woman in New York harbor if she was not such a tourist draw.