The US president wants Americans to believe they are facing an emergency. The real danger is from his administration
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n Minnesota, armed and masked agents are ripping families apart. They are seizing parents while they wait with their child at a bus stop, going door to door seeking undocumented migrants and breaking car windows to drag people out. Last Wednesday an officer shot dead Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen. Her killing is a tragedy for all who loved her, and most of all for the three children left motherless. It also marks her country’s crossing of a Rubicon.
Where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) once preferred to keep a low profile, it now seeks publicity and confrontation – pumped up on billions of dollars in funding, the aggression and brazenness of the administration and the licensing of bigotry.
While statistics show that violent and property crime rates have plunged since the 1990s, Mr Trump has conjured a threat of American carnage, and an enemy responsible: undocumented migrants – and, increasingly, those who stand with them. Fear is an instrument. The administration will struggle to meet its target of removing 1 million undocumented migrants a year unless people are frightened into “self‑deporting”, and sympathisers are frightened out of offering support. Most Americans – and the majority of independent voters – think Mr Trump’s deportation drive is excessive. But Republican-aligned voters disagree, and a third think he has not gone far enough.
