The Department of Homeland Security Says Trump’s Immigration Enforcers Are on a Mission From God
This week the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a controversial video that lionizes the work of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which it suggests is aimed at delivering divine justice to evildoers. The video quotes Isaiah 6:8, which describes the prophet’s acceptance of a mission from God, and includes an excerpt from the folk song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”
Critics of the video charged DHS with blasphemy for invoking the Bible and God’s will to sanctify CBP and, by implication, the Trump administration’s immigration policies. But the puzzles posed by the department’s propaganda go beyond its dubious claim of divine authority, especially when you consider the details of Isaiah’s mission.
Although no one would mistake President Donald Trump for a religious man, the video is consistent with his grandiose self-image. “I believe that my life was saved that day in Butler for a very good reason,” Trump said in his March 4 address to Congress, referring to the attempted assassination in Pennsylvania last July. “I was saved by God to make America great again. I believe that.”
Among other things, Trump thinks that divine mission entails “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” But as he concedes, that project includes “pretty vicious” treatment of peaceful, productive people who have lived and worked in this country for many years. That reality explains why Trump has repeatedly tried to soften the edges of his crackdown on unauthorized residents by advocating lenience for certain groups—in particular, employees in the farm and hospitality industries.
As Trump tells it, that impulse is driven not just by the economic concerns of business owners (including Republicans who are otherwise inclined to support his agenda) but also by compassion for hardworking individuals who are trying to make an honest living, albeit without the government’s permission. “These people…work so hard,” he noted at a July 3 rally in Des Moines, Iowa, referring to undocumented farm employees. “They bend over all day. We don’t have too many people [who] can do that.”
Trump added that “some of the farmers…cry when they see [immigration raids] happen.” He alluded to “cases where…people have worked for a farmer, on a farm for 14, 15 years” and “then they get thrown out, pretty viciously.” His conclusion: “We can’t do it. We’ve got to work with the farmers and people that have hotels and leisure properties.”
Such soft-heartedness appalls immigration hardliners, who understand that mass deportation necessarily involves detaining and expelling people who pose no th
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