His list of measures of this point include: “Defunding ICE, closing concentration camps, restoring temporary protected status, respecting asylum claims, ending to the harassment of people on visas, and welcoming more international students.”
The Democrats managed to mangle the political advantage they gained in 2020 by highlighting the issue of violent police misconduct. And they accepted the Republican framing on what “defund” means.
ICE as it currently exists is a highly problematic function, and it needs to be reformed thoroughly, i.e., defunded in its current state. The Democrats themselves pushed the idea of creating a Department of Homeland Security as a large umbrella authority after the 2001 “9-11” attack. And in its current form it’s a highly questionable entity, especially the way ICE is operating.
The concept of “governmental reorganization” is not a great applause line for politicians. It sounds vague, bureaucratic, and boring. But a message of “Law enforcement of all kinds have to do their jobs in a professional way. And having masked goons with no identification as police on their uniforms or their vehicles kidnapping people off the street is the opposite of legitimate policing” – that is something that voters can understand. And the Democrats can dramatize this in a variety of convincing ways.
Froomkin’s point of “closing concentration camps” can also be used straightforwardly as an issue. Particularly when highlighted in connection with ICE’s goon-squad-style operations. The Democrats are sadly out of practice in stressing abuses like this. But they need to learn it again, and fast.
Froomkin’s other four actions in this category are part of arguing for a sane, legal, and decent immigration system. The Kamala Harris approach to this issue was essentially to say: Look, we Democrats want to be much tougher in keeping out those scary immigrants out of the country but the Republicans won’t let us!
We have plenty of experience from American politics, European politics, and xenophobic demagoguery in other parts of the world that when the center-right and even center-left parties try to mimic the far right on immigration hysteria, it consistently strengthens the far right. Because they are accepting the framing of the far right.
And in the Trump 2.0 era, we see that Trump has been using the immigration issue as its main excuse for arbitrary policing and getting people accustomed to goon-squad raids cruelty in their treatment as its main tool to undermine democracy and the rule of law. And to accustom people to an attitude of respectable callousness toward The Others. And the scope of who counts as The Others keeps getting bigger and bigger.
The Democrats can’t coopt xenophobic politics away. They have to challenge it very directly. And to highlight the outrageous nature of the Trump regime’s actions on that front. In the early months of the current administration, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen did just that with his trip to El Salvador this year to verify that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, arrested by ICE goons and illegally deported by the Trump regime. (2) And the publicity that he created brought not only attention to the issue, it was a key factor in swinging public opinion away from preferring Republicans on immigration to preferring Democrats. It’s possible to do this right.
But they can’t do it by reciting lists of issues that campaign consultants have elaborately vetted for their popularity. Which they do all too often.
And they have to show that they are willing to fight the Republicans over them. Constantly saying the word “bipartisan” and pretending that somehow Trump and MAGA are something other than the Republican Party won’t accomplish this.
Federico Finkelstein, a leading scholar on fascism, notes how the designating of enemies as deadly threats. Which is what Trump 2.0 is doing to immigrants and Latinos more generally. Finkelstein wrote in 2024:
Only when people are turned into “mortal enemies” does true fascism emerge. Making these enemies living subjects that can be victimized becomes its practice. Thus, when the concept of the enemy is projected onto the victims, when it becomes a concrete manifestation of the fascist politics of extreme hatred and xenophobia, fascism is able to turn propaganda into reality. Enemies are no longer an idea; they become real people, victims of fascist ideology. (3)The Trump regime’s definition of the internal Enemy will continue to widen. Trump has already been ranting about how Democratic mayor nominee in New York City, Zohran Mamdani, calling a Communist, an label he uses loosely for Democratic opponents. It’s a circular definition, to be fair: Trump Republicans – and are there really any other kind of Republicans today? – regard democracy and Communism as more-or-less equivalent.
David Kurtz made an important point in a column last month about how the brutal ICE actions are also part of a larger white supremacist project:
I usually cast President Trump’s anti-immigrant mass deportation agenda as a rule of law story. But it is of course so much more than that. It is fundamentally a story about racism, xenophobia, and othering. It’s about preying on our fears, differences, and prejudices to create a villainous foe whom he can easily vanquish in repeated set-pieces. It’s about letting loose the worst of our impulses to heighten and sustain divisions among us.
The mass deportation agenda is just one part of a larger agenda in which white Americans are fronted as the real America and everyone else is second-class, unless they individually demonstrate in lavish ways a high enough degree of fealty to Donald Trump. [my emphasis] (4)
Notes:
(1) Froomkin, Dan (2025): Is it time to start planning a post-Trump restoration? Heads Up News 06/30/2025. <https://www.headsupnews.org/p/is-it-time-to-start-planning-a-post> (Accessed: 2025-03-08).
(2) Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen on why he went to El Salvador and what's next. GZero World with Ian Bremmer. <https://www.gzeromedia.com/podcast/gzero-world-podcast/maryland-sen-chris-van-hollen-on-why-he-went-to-el-salvador-and-whats-next#toggle-gdpr> (Accessed: 2025-143-08).
(3) Finkelstein, Federico (2024): The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy, 94. Oakland: University of California Press.
(4) Kurtz, David (2025): Trump Pushes White Nationalist Agenda Across Multiple Fronts. TPM 08/20/2025. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/trump-pushes-white-nationalist-agenda-across-multiple-fronts> (Accessed: 2025-21-08).
