Trump’s Real Problem With Immigrants: There Aren’t Enough To Evict

It is highly unlikely that Trump will be able to match President Obama’s record on evicting illegal immigrants, because their numbers today are nowhere near as high as they were when Obama was in charge.

And Trump hates being behind Obama. The attention-deprived child in Trump is so close to the surface.

Obama was able to deport almost 440,000 people in 2013 – more than any other president since that time. In that year, the immigrant population reached a record high of 41.3-million (legal and illegal); it had doubled from the previous decade and tripled from 1980.

There were, in a nutshell, many more people to deport.

In 2013 a significant minority of Americans (18%) favored identifying and deporting all undocumented immigrants. So Obama had support behind his program.

At first, he deputized current law enforcement officers to target illegal immigrants. He doubled the enforcement workforce and focused on deporting immigrants with serious offences.

Trump can’t do that, because fewer people have tried to enter the US, and because there is a greater opposition to cooperating with federal ICE authorities. Adding to his uphill climb to a record is the fact that if Trump truly wants to break ahead, he’ll need to more than double the current pace of deportations.

His real problem with his constituents, though – those who believe in and celebrate his deportation moves – is that more and more people are betraying him and flipping to the other side.

Highly visual images showing the pain of deportation – the agony of a mother torn away from her child; the grief of a father unable to support his family – have transformed American sympathy. 91% of Americans welcome immigration to the US; two-thirds understand that immigration is a difficult process and would welcome reforms to make it faster. 68% of ‘Strong Liberals’ say it is “acceptable” to illegally immigrate to the U.S.

Trump’s entire platform of crackdowns on immigrants is fighting against popular desires.

A majority of Americans say actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have “gone too far.”

This attitude against Trump’s crackdown is bound to harden and expand.

That emotion is fed by incidents like the shocking images from MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, when federal agents in tactical gear, including some on horseback, swept the area looking for illegal immigrants. It looked more like a foreign invasion of America than it did like everyone’s warm view of their country.

What fewer people saw – because it was not carried on mass media to the same degree as the ICE police on horseback was – are the pictures of the resistance that bystanders put up.

Once the surprise of the police raid was over, citizens rallied against the armed ‘invaders’.

Even when the agents were in armoured cars, the crowds came around and harassed them, videoed them for the records, and pulled together in a hostile and unified front.

LA Mayor Karen Bass delivered a scathing attack on the ICE operation, describing it as a military-style occupation that forced children in summer camp to hide indoors. She called the raid “un-American,” as Blackhawk helicopters and mounted units moved through the park with no clear cause.

The mayor vowed resistance, legal action, and solidarity, declaring: “This is not immigration enforcement — it’s terror.

“This is another example of the Administration ratchetting up chaos in an American city…This is a political agenda provoking fear and terror…It is outrageous that we have US Marines, trained to kill foreign soldiers, deployed in our cities.”

Instead of violent criminals in the park that day, there were children. “It was their summer day camp,” the Mayor went on, “I spoke to an eight-year-old who understood enough that he was afraid they were going to take his parents away.”

There is no doubt that it fanned outrage across the city.

Mayor Brown reviewed the operation with the people; the consensus was that because no one was actually arrested during the operation, it had been performed as a TikTok video: “If you want to make a film you should apply for a license like everyone else.”

Of course, Trump knows a lot about play-acting. It can be argued that he has never acted in a “real world” fashion in his life. His career was built as a pretend businessman on TV; when he entered the world of real business he failed completely.

The only think he took away from it was his feel for timing: two weeks. Two weeks was what it took to line up another episode of his TV show, and two weeks is the constant refrain from Trump whenever he is asked when action will be ready.

Now, his plan to create a video-worthy moment is building a wave of resistance.

People are paying more and more attention to his actions.

For Trump, this is not good.

Trump (orange, above) loses votes when people have the most attentiveness to news coverage.

Harris (blue, above) did best with people who understood the issues and were well-read on the details.

Trump, then, has a really big problem when these paths come together: when the increasing public distaste for his immigration ugliness meets a surge in media coverage.

He is in a sense putting a spotlight on his crimes.

It gets quite grotesque when the lies are extreme. Here is the cover-up for his inaction during the Texas flood that tragically took the lives of so many people:

Paraphrasing the above: President Trump recognized right away that the weather system needed to be upgraded but the installation is not yet complete.

How could ANYONE believe a croc like that?

But it ran on Fox News, so a certain demographic was judged as a suitable target.

The fact is that Trump ordered the Pentagon to stop sharing weather data with the understaffed weather service.

A viewer shot back: “Every word is a LIE. Every. Single. Word. Musk/DOGE gutted NWS & NOAA. It’s the same trick he played with the FAA. Break it. Fix it. Be the hero, save the day. Musk wants his STARLINK installed. So, someone ask her for details on this “new system”, what’s it called? Who’s the contractor? Why isn’t it working? And so on! FFS people!! Don’t just let her make shit up - and LIE through those fake, puffy lips!”

Another noted that he was sure it would be ready…in two weeks.

Trump’s administration is only six months in and already is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. By the time the disasters at the health clinics play through, he will be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

Just like Covid. And the planes falling from the sky when he cut funding to the FAA.

And he will carry all the new grief in the same sad-bag in which he stores his tears from that appalling episode.

There is blood on his hands.

As people see it and become more and more repulsed, their sympathies will turn to the immigrants he is abusing.

Trump has not been able to deport as many people as Obama, partly because he is getting zero support from anyone in the public who is not a paid employee of ICE.

He may have a gestapo, but he is isolating it in a tower of fear.

And it will fall anyway, Donald. Too many people hate you.

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Next week will be NOT MY TYPE: One Woman v.s. a President…The story of E. Jean Carroll’s law suit against Donald Trump

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