Trump’s threat of mass arrests stinks of weakness and failure
By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer
June 18 at 10:24 AM
Perhaps it’s entirely a coincidence that President Trump announced that he’s unleashing his deportation force only hours before he’s scheduled to kick off his reelection campaign with a rally in Florida.
But, coincidence or not, Trump undoubtedly sees this announcement as a show of fearsome political strength. Trump plans to run in 2020 on the notion that he represents law and order on our southern border, while painting Democrats as weak and in favor of open borders.
What better way to dramatize this contrast than to crank up the deportations, displaying Trump’s toughness while provoking Democrats into squealing about their squishy, pointy-headed, elitist humanitarian concerns?
But this latest threat is better understood as a grand expression of weakness and failure on Trump’s part — political weakness, rooted to no small degree in his abject failure on immigration, his signature issue.
Trump tweeted late Monday that next week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will soon begin removing the “millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States.”
This is an apparent reference to a plan for a blitzkrieg of detentions of thousands of parents and children that was originally shelved amid concerns about workability and political blowback over imagery of cruel child arrests. Trump appeared to tweet that the plan is back in motion: “They will be removed as fast as they come in.”
But in an important piece, Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti of The Post report facts and context that raise serious doubts about the motives and timing of this “announcement.” ICE officials were caught off guard by Trump’s declaration. What’s more, the mass arrests don’t appear immediately imminent, though they could come soon.
It’s also not clear whether ICE has the manpower to fully unleash such a strike force. And the very act of announcing the action itself raises questions, because, as Miroff and Sacchetti note, “publicizing a future law enforcement operation is unheard of at ICE.”
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/18/trumps-threat-mass-arrests-stinks-weakness-failure/?utm_term=.150015d22355&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
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