The Unrest In California Proves Trump's Always Wanted To War

“If it’s a lie then we fight on that lie…but we gotta fight,” —Slim Charles, The Wire.

It’s all been a lie.

The frightening story of immigrants killing and raping Americans. The fear-mongering that immigrants are taking American jobs. The horror stories of an open border and hordes of people coming across in the middle of the night. 

All of it has been a lie. And yet, none of it has stopped this administration from waging a full-out war on Latinos and people of color. 

Currently, the military-obsessed president has turned peaceful protests into a standoff between those who don’t believe people should be arrested at graduation ceremonies and court hearings against the American soldiers. As it stands, some 2,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines have been sent to California to quell mostly non-violent demonstrations against Trump’s authoritarian push to “Make America white again.”

And all of it is based on lies. Lies that began under Trump’s first presidency, when he claimed that illegal immigration was so bad that he wanted to build a wall and Mexico was going to pay for it. Despite that entire campaign falling flat on its face, the alarmism and fear tactics of the scary illegal stealing your job, woman, and Toyota Camry persisted.

So much so that once Trump got back in office, he began a war on immigrants using his henchmen at ICE to round up people of color, whether they’d actually committed a crime or not, and have them incarcerated and deported.

And all of this was built on lies. 

But here’s the truth: 

Illegal immigrants make up only 3.5% of the total U.S. population, which is around 11 million people. Clearly that number is impossible to know exactly, “…the estimate essentially comes from taking the foreign-born population from census records, then subtracting the number of legal immigrants.”

Around 8.1 million of these undocumented immigrants are working or looking for work, and despite using fake social security cards to secure employment, those workers who are not paid in cash pay taxes on the money they earn. 

“In 2010, they contributed an estimated $10.6 billion in state and local taxes, and $13 billion in Social Security,” The Week reports. “Contrary to common perception, illegal immigrants don’t qualify for public benefits like welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid, as these programs require proof of legal immigration status.”

This means that they pay into a system and receive nothing in return. 

Two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been in the U.S. for 10 or more years, and some 60% of that population lives in six states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.

And because Trump has waged war on immigration, the federal government spends more money trying to round up and deport those taxpayers than they do on the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Marshals Service combined. 

All of this is based on the myth that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, commit crimes at an alarming rate. However, studies have found that while immigration has increased over the years, crime rates have decreased.

“The American Immigration Council compared crime data to demographic data from 1980 to 2022, the most recent data available. The data showed that as the immigrant share of the population grew, the crime rate declined,” a study done by the American Immigration Council found. 

“In 1980, immigrants made up 6.2% of the U.S. population, and the total crime rate was 5,900 crimes per 100,000 people. By 2022, the share of immigrants had more than doubled, to 13.9%, while the total crime rate had dropped by 60.4%, to 2,335 crimes per 100,000 people. Specifically, the violent crime rate fell by 34.5% and the property crime rate fell by 63.3%,” it reads.

But this is personal, it always has been. Trump and his administration has labeled Venezuelans “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters” and “the worst of the worst.” This fear-mongering led to the arrest of some 238 Venezuelans who were sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. An investigation by the Texas Tribune and ProPublica found that not only had many of those deported not been convicted or even accused of crimes, but the Trump administration knew this and deported them anyway.

Because this was never about the truth. This was always about a little man with freakishly small hands and a giant ego who was never taken seriously, in business or in politics. This has always been about the joke of a president wanting desperately to be seen as a man. It’s why he’s been hellbent on releasing the military. He was going to deploy a militaristic show of force because that’s what bullies do. Whether it was his nonsensical, wildly-expensive showcase of army vehicles during his birthday, or the deployment of troops on peaceful protesters, the president is so far from being an emperor that someone might want to tell him.

This was never about immigration; this has always been about a cartoonish heel needing an opponent, and unfortunately for America, the boy impersonating a president has set his sights on anybody in the immigrant community.  

And even though it’s all based on lies, he’s still going to ride on that.

The Unrest In California Proves Trump’s Always Wanted To War  was originally published on cassiuslife.com