Immigration Under Trump A Moral And
Can we agree that the actions of the Trump Administration with regard to immigration are, at the very least, morally repugnant? I mean, masked, unidentified ICE agents arresting people at the local Home Depot? Rounding up folks with no criminal record who have been in the U.S. with their families for 20 or 30 years? Catching people as they come out of immigration hearings as they try to do the right thing? Come on. Is that what we signed up for? Really? Is that who we want to be?
Rwanda? South Sudan? Eswatini? Really?
But it doesn’t stop there. Now the Administration is paying authoritarian regimes to take in migrants we don’t want. That’s not border security. That’s not getting tough on immigration. It’s performative. It’s a moral failure dressed up as policy. It endangers our national security. And it’s expensive! The bill, which is difficult to precisely nail down because the costs are hidden, runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Who pays for that? We do.
To be clear, not everyone crossing into the U.S. is fleeing persecution. Many are economic migrants, people leaving poverty and searching for a better life. But does that somehow make it acceptable to deport them to countries they’ve never lived in, and in some cases, never even heard of? Think about it: a Guatemalan farmworker, desperate to support his family, ends up on a plane to Rwanda or South Sudan. A mother from Honduras is sent to Eswatini, a country smaller than New Jersey. These are not rational or humane solutions. They are bureaucratic contortions designed to make migrants disappear from American soil, no matter the human cost.
Aside from the moral cost…
Speaking of cost, Rwanda reportedly wants the U.S. to pay $500 million to take a handful of deportees. Does anyone believe that money would go toward care and feeding of prisoners? A military C-17 flight costs $4,675 per person. Why don’t we hear more about the cost? Because the true price tags are often obscured. Agreements are labeled “commercially sensitive” or “diplomatically negotiated.” Expenses are scattered across multiple budgets to avoid congressional scrutiny. But the secrecy is also political. These policies are more about performance than results, designed to signal toughness on migration while hiding the fact that the costs are astronomical and the outcomes negligible.
And what about the results?
What about those outcomes? What if we compare the current model with…say…Obama? Obama deported 5.3 million people during his years in office, more than any President in history. Why didn’t we hear about that? Two reasons. The first is that most of those removals under Obama were done legally, through the court system, offering the opportunity for due process rather than having masked men snatch people off the streets and put them on the next plane. Second, Obama concentrated on removing actual criminals. By 2015, over 90% of deportees under Obama had criminal convictions. In other words, people who had already gone through the U.S. legal system. Contrast that with the current efforts to simply round up as many people as possible, 60% of whom have no criminal record or pending charges. This isn’t immigration law in action; it’s deportation by fiat, with little judicial oversight and even less transparency.
Not to mention endangering our national security
I mentioned the danger to national security. Here’s why. First, paying hundreds of millions to regimes like Rwanda strengthens leaders who suppress dissent and stoke instability. That’s money they can use for repression, not security. Second, how do we lecture China or Russia on human rights while we outsource asylum to countries with poor records? Our adversaries already use this hypocrisy as propaganda. Third, South Sudan can barely handle its own displaced population. Dropping U.S.-transferred migrants there risks tipping fragile systems into chaos, and chaos has a funny way of spreading. Finally, every C-17 deportation flight pulls resources away from defense missions. C-17s aren’t built for deportations. This drains readiness.
Sending migrants thousands of miles away is not border security. It’s political theater at taxpayer expense. Whether they are fleeing persecution or chasing opportunity, migrants are human beings, not cargo to be dumped in a country chosen for its willingness to cash the check. America is stronger when it takes responsibility, not when it outsources it. Every charter flight to Rwanda or South Sudan is a reminder of something bigger: a nation trying to buy its way out of its own obligations. And that is both a moral failure and a strategic one.
Bruce Berton served as a U.S. diplomat for over three decades, ultimately rising to the senior ranks of the Foreign Service, including two years as Ambassador and Head of Mission at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is a native of the Pacific Northwest and a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University. He is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 300 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.