The Radical Honesty of Trump’s Racist New Immigration Policy

If you press even a little on any of these claims by Noem, like a blazer that only holds up on camera, they come apart. This asylee, said Noem, was not yet “radicalized” when he entered the country. Instead, she said Biden was responsible for alleged criminal behavior that followed years later. Noem wanted to represent this case as a failure of the immigration system, but even if it was true that he was not “vetted,” how was the vetting supposed to have identified “radicalization” that Noem also claims hadn’t happened yet? The host rather mildly raised the fact that as a CIA contractor, the man would have undergone “extensive vetting” at the time of his service to the United States, and then asked Noem why a DHS agency, USCIS, had approved his asylum application in April of this year. “Did you know then that he was moving toward radicalization?” Noem did not answer the question, even when asked again and again. The country has been “infiltrated,” she insisted, going even further into white nationalist rhetoric.

The Trump administration seems to be treating the suspect in last week’s shooting, in other words, as little more than a useful scapegoat in the administration’s ongoing war on immigrants. They’re not being subtle about it. And, true to form, when Trump lackeys fail to gain traction with a particular narrative, or when they falter, they quickly pivot, from one racist trope to another.

The current state of the immigration system was ugly enough already. Trump has barred people from 19 countries, mostly in the Middle East, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report published in August by the American Immigration Council. Since June, he has reportedly been looking to bar entry to people from 36 additional countries. To resurrect this plan now, perhaps in an attempt to move on from the D.C. shooting story, demonstrates that there are few “distractions” when it comes to this administration: only old, bad ideas come back again.