Snatching people just as they are about to receive their green cards. Arresting undocumented immigrants in San Diego who have no criminal records other than immigration violations. Sweeping up U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status in immigration raids. Setting free drug kingpins whose trade has caused untold numbers of deaths and shattered lives. Using a tragic shooting of two National Guard members to justify an unrelated, race-based ban on immigrants from entire nations. Welcome to President Donald Trump’s holiday season. For months, the president’s immigration strategy has put the lie to his stated primary purpose of getting rid of dangerous criminals, “the worst of the worst.” The reality is he has a larger goal than just cracking down on illegal immigration, as underscored by his recent comments. He doesn’t want certain types of people in the country — those that he deems “non-compatible with Western Civilization.” The seriousness of his desire to address the scourge of illegal drugs has similarly come into question. While blowing up alleged drug runners and their boats — a legally dubious activity — he has pardoned major players in the international drug world. The marquee figure in this crowd is former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for running his country as a vast “narco-state” that helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. Don’t read over that too quickly: 400 tons of cocaine. Estimating the dollar value of illicit drugs is tricky and vague, but that amount would clearly equate to tens of billions of dollars. Who knows the human cost. No one, save perhaps the president and some of his allies, believes Trump’s evidence-free claim that the prosecution of Orlando Hernández was a “setup” by the Biden administration. The Washington Post recently reported that Trump has pardoned about 100 people accused of drug-related crimes during his two terms as president. On Trump’s first full day in office this year, he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of creating “the largest online black market for illegal drugs and other illicit goods of its time,” according to the Post. In the months since, Trump has granted clemency to others, including Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover and Baltimore drug kingpin Garnett Gilbert Smith, in addition to Orlando Hernández. Trump’s own actions undermine his administration’s targeting of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for running a “narco-state.” Sure, Trump’s supporters will point to unseemly pardons by past presidents, but that doesn’t justify these. On immigration, Trump has accomplished a rare political feat: Pursuing something the public wanted but in a manner that is causing the public to now turn against him. Trump won a second term in part because of voter frustration with chaos at the border, with surging migration left unchecked by the Biden administration and an immigration system that felt out of control. The new president quickly took a hard line in dealing with that, bringing the border largely under control, severely restricting asylum and, in something of a departure, making citizenship tests more difficult. But it is the interior immigration raids that have diminished support for his handling of immigration, according to polls. Much of the immigration enforcement may well be carried out appropriately. But the militarized raids and rough treatment of immigrants in some cases have jarred public sensibilities. Meanwhile, clashes between ICE forces and protesters have generated viral videos, though people on both sides have been blamed for being instigators. The targeting of individuals going through the process for legal status has seemed particularly unfair. Reports are legion of people being grabbed and handcuffed at interviews to obtain green cards, which would have given them proof of the right to live and work in the United States. In some cases, this has happened with their U.S. citizen spouses present, as reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune and others. Some people about to take the oath of citizenship have been stopped from doing so because of their nationality. Citizenship ceremonies, usually a universal feel-good event, have been canceled. For months, controversy has swirled over arrests of immigrants showing up for court hearings and other immigration processing appointments. More randomly, ICE agents have been seen and heard asking people, apparently based on their appearance, “Were you born here?” in street encounters. Immigration authorities in San Diego and Imperial counties are increasingly targeting immigrants without criminal histories as overall arrests have soared this year, inewsource reported earlier this month. The Trump administration had promised to deport “the worst of the worst including gang members, murderers, and rapists,” but new data show that 58 percent of those arrested in San Diego and Imperial counties had no criminal background, other than immigration violations, the first offense of which can be a civil or misdemeanor federal violation. The Washington, D.C., shooting of National Guard members — one of whom died and the other who was critically wounded — led Trump to suggest an even larger policy goal regarding foreign residents and arrivals. The accused shooter is an Afghan national and legal immigrant who worked alongside CIA-linked forces in Afghanistan. By all accounts so far, the terrible crime was an isolated incident, possibly committed by a person some believe was struggling with mental health issues. Trump quickly said all Afghan arrivals should be ended and broadened his view to include immigrants from an undefined list of other countries, as reported by The Guardian and others. “I will 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…and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States,” he wrote. He vowed to denaturalize U.S. citizens “who undermine domestic tranquility” and deport “foreign nationals” deemed “non-compatible with Western Civilization.” Trump aides such as Stephen Miller, the architect of the immigration crackdown, and Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security, may have even surpassed Trump in scope and vitriol. “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” Noem wrote on social media, suggesting targeting more than 30 countries. “Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom — not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” There isn’t much joy this holiday season for people directly and indirectly affected by the administration’s outlook. And the worst may be yet to come. What they said Catherine Rampell (@crampell), The Bulwark, MS NOW “According to a new court filing, the Trump admin has a six-page list of banned words that Head Start locations are forbidden from using when describing their programs. Among censored words: ‘disability,’ ‘race,’ ‘women,’ ‘trauma,’ ‘Gulf of Mexico.’” ...read more read less