The small numbers of individuals sent to South Sudan or elsewhere have been vitriolically branded “barbaric criminal illegal aliens.” Yet Orville Etoria, a 63-year-old Jamaican immigrant who had lived in the U.S. for nearly 50 years, poignantly described the experience of being expelled to Eswatini in an interview with The New Yorker: “To be honest, it helped me imagine how the slaves might have felt, going to another land in shackles and chains — that loneliness, that disconnect, that sense of loss.” While the Trump administration excels in creating terrifying spectacles, the most significant development of this last year, and one that builds on decades of bipartisan support for immigration enforcement, was the passage of the massive funding bill in July. The pre-Trump tradition of bipartisan support for immigration enforcement and the Democrats’ failure to challenge the scapegoating and demonization of immigrants has opened the door to the paramilitarization of American life.
Author: Silky Shah
Published at: 2026-01-20 22:02:50
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