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May 01, 2006; Los Angeles, CA, USA; During 'A Day Without an Immigrant' , more than 500,000 people marched down Wilshire to protest a proposed federal crackdown on illegal immigration.
Legal and national security experts are responding to what the White House is calling, “one of the most important messages ever released” by President Donald Trump, a 511-word broadside attacking 53 million immigrants in America, vowing to not only end immigration from certain countries but to foster “reverse migration,” a term used in white nationalist circles.
In his Thanksgiving remarks, President Trump denounced the U.S. being “divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being ‘Politically Correct,’ and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration.”
He claimed that there are 53 million people in America born outside the U.S., most of whom, the president claimed, “are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”
The president condemned what he called the “refugee burden,” stating that it “is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.”
He specifically targeted the “hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia,” and alleged that “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.”
Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country.”
He also promised to “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
The Associated Press called it Trump’s “most severe social media post against immigration since returning to the Oval Office in January,” and noted that it “came after the shooting Wednesday of two National Guard members who were patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital under his orders. One died and the other is in critical condition.”
The Washington Post reported that “the tenor of Trump’s posts was a significant escalation in his rhetoric around immigration and appeared to be a vow to make life so difficult for many immigrants to the United States that they eventually opt to depart.”
Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, remarked that the rhetoric in the president’s statement “is indistinguishable from the stuff you hear coming out of white nationalists. Completely identical language.”
Reichlin-Melnick rejected Trump’s “outrageous claim that ‘most’ immigrants, which include over 25 million U.S. citizens, ‘are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.'”
He also noted that “immigrants use LESS federal benefits per capita than native-born U.S. citizens; and the most common is Social Security (after they paid into it for decades like everyone else).”
The Steady State, a group of more than 360 former U.S. national security officials, in a statement warned that, “Trump is now describing millions of immigrants, refugees, and even naturalized citizens as ‘invaders,’ ‘non-compatible with Western Civilization,’ and candidates for ‘reverse migration,” which they called, “a blueprint for total authoritarian population control.”
“If he can revoke citizenship based on his personal judgment of who ‘loves America,” they asked, “the question becomes: who is next?”
Professor of law Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer, commented that “The United States should enforce immigration laws passed by Congress, but this proclamation is racist and far exceeds the power of the president.”
Bill Neely, a former Chief Global Correspondent for NBC News, wrote that Trump’s remarks were “filled with hatred & virtually an incitement to violence against not just immigrants but settled US citizens of a different colour from him.”