Trump's Immigration Policy Runs on Collective Punishment

After a tragic crime involving an Afghan immigrant, Trump shifted the national conversation from justice for an individual to punishment for entire communities. Skye Jethani and Matthew Soerens (World Relief) unpack how fear-driven immigration policies rely on collective punishment, why most detained immigrants have committed no violent crimes, and how this approach undermines both justice and family unity. (Full conversation: Holy Post 699: The Limits of Liberalism & Punishing Immigrants with Matthew Soerens)

Skye Jethani: Just before Thanksgiving, there was this horrific shooting that happened in Washington, D.C., where two National Guards. West Virginia National Guard people, I believe, were shot. One of them was killed.

It turns out that the perpetrator of this crime was an Afghan immigrant who had helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan and, as part of that, was resettled here in the U.S. It may have been the last time you were on the show, it was during the Biden administration, you and I talked about how the Biden administration really bungled the whole Afghan withdrawal, and how many of our allies who had helped U.S. soldiers there for years were abandoned, they and their families, to face retribution by the Taliban.

This appears to be one of the guys who we actually helped out of Afghanistan and resettle in the U.S., but has now perpetrated this awful crime. Explain what this event has triggered in the broader conversation around immigration and refugee resettlement.

Matthew Soerens: Yeah. I mean, first of all, this crime is horrific. I think we’re all devastated by the loss of life. This young woman who lost her life, and another who, as we’re recording, I believe is still in the hospital. We’re praying for his healing and praying for their families.

And yet, after that event, what we’ve seen is not just a rush to judge the individual who allegedly perpetrated this crime—which is, of course, absolutely appropriate. That person should face justice under the law. But we’ve also seen a very broad sort of collective punishment.

Within literally a day or two of this horrific crime, we had the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, and other parts of the Trump administration saying, We are going to reassess green card approvals for people from 19 different countries of nationality. That’s since been extended even to other countries. We’re going to stop all affirmative asylum applications, not just for people from one nationality, but for various others. We’re going to stop all processing for Afghans of any sort, including people who were in process to come lawfully because they served alongside the U.S. military or are otherwise at risk.

And then - and this doesn’t have a specific policy tied to it - but the president is tweeting for a permanent ban on migration from the “third world.” I don’t even know exactly which countries qualify as that term. I haven’t heard it in 10 or 15 years. It’s a little dated, but I think that basically means Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East—which is like 80% of the world’s population.

Skye Jethani: Countries where people aren’t white roughly aligns with that. So you talked about collective punishment. One person who belongs to a community or group commits a crime, and it gives justification to punish the entire group—deport or whatever.

Matthew Soerens: There is this dynamic when a horrible crime like this happens where, when I hear that it was a white guy like me, I’m oddly sort of relieved because I know that I will not face punishment as a white man for something that another white man did.

But if it was an Afghan, or a Venezuelan, or someone who came as a refugee, or someone who didn’t have legal status, what we tend to see—and this is not totally new to the Trump administration—is a broad group of people suddenly becoming suspect, even though they have absolutely nothing to do with that specific circumstance.

In some ways, this is the defining characteristic of our immigration policy as a country right now. Now it’s Afghans and various others, but even before that, with the immigration enforcement we’ve seen in Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, and other places around the country, the administration will point to a few isolated cases where someone committed a horrific violent crime.

To be really clear, if those people ever get out of jail, I want them to be deported. I find it a little frustrating sometimes on the left of the immigration rights movement—the “not one more deportation” rhetoric. Actually, there are some people who should be deported, and there are people who should be detained while they’re pending a deportation hearing because there’s a public safety concern.

The problem is that’s not the vast majority of people who are currently being detained. The last data we’ve seen is that about 5% of immigrants who are detained right now have been convicted of a violent crime. Of the other 95%, a few have been convicted of minor offenses, but most people haven’t been convicted of any crime at all. That’s not to say they’re lawfully in the country, although some of them actually are. You have people with pending asylum claims who have nevertheless been detained. Many others were unlawfully present because they crossed the border 30 years ago, overstayed a temporary visa, or were here legally until a temporary protection, like Temporary Protected Status, was withdrawn.

I’m not condoning the violation of immigration law. But the vast majority of Americans, and I think this is true even for most evangelical Christians, believe there are better alternatives than spending massive taxpayer funds detaining huge numbers of people and separating them from their families. In many cases, people could pay a fine, go through a criminal background check, and if you committed a serious criminal offense, then you face deportation. But for the vast majority who have not, this would keep families together, which I think resonates with a lot of Christians.

We saw this in the first Trump administration, when the one immigration policy that got overturned was family separation at the border. I genuinely think that was because most Republicans and Democrats were against it. Most white evangelicals were against it. Most Catholics were against it. Nobody wanted to defend it. I think a lot of Americans haven’t realized the extent of family separation now, which is actually much larger in terms of numbers - not at the border necessarily, but in communities throughout the United States.

A lot of that has its root in this idea of collective punishment: Here’s an example of a Venezuelan who committed this awful crime, so we’re going to go after all Venezuelans—or all Latino immigrants—who we can under the law.