In his final speech as president, Ronald Reagan emphasized the essential role of immigration in American greatness. “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world,” he said. Reagan cited a letter he’d received about how one can’t simply move to France and become a Frenchman or move to Japan and become Japanese. “But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American,” he said.
Donald Trump, who launched his political career with lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace, is devoted to destroying this ideal. For Trump and his movement, real Americans are defined by race and ancestry. The administration’s war on birthright citizenship stems from that belief. It’s the reason Trump, who accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of our country, has limited refugee resettlement almost exclusively to white South Africans. JD Vance channeled the same idea last year when, attacking the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, he said, “I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”
And now the Trump administration is attempting to strip Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, of her citizenship so as to deport her. This is more than just another persecution of one of Trump’s political enemies. Rather, his government is tacitly declaring the citizenship of all foreign-born people provisional, their Americanness something that can be revoked. It’s a frontal attack on the idea of constitutional equality. As Hannah Arendt wrote — a quote that the writer John Ganz reminded me of — “One is almost tempted to measure the degree of totalitarian infection by the extent to which the concerned governments use their sovereign right of denationalization.”
This week, as you might have read by now, around 20 Homeland Security agents raided Omar’s home in Washington, seizing her phone and computers, among other things. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation is aimed at denaturalizing her, a prelude to deporting her. In its attempt to cast out Omar, the administration is looking not just at her own actions, but also at those of her father, who applied for citizenship when she was a teenager. Apparently, the case hinges on whether she was 18 rather than 17 at the time.
I have no idea whether Omar or her father (who died in 2020) did anything wrong, but the details of her immigration paperwork are somewhat beside the point. What matters is that Trump targeted Omar for her politics and, even more, her ethnicity. Just months into her first term, he was calling for her expulsion from America, his rally crowds lustily chanting, “Send her back!” In a cabinet meeting last year, he called Omar “garbage” and attacked Somalis more broadly, saying, “I don’t want them in our country.” As his political fortunes have waned, his rhetoric about Somalis has grown increasingly fascistic. On Truth Social last week, he wrote that the “once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants.” As if trying to incite a pogrom, he urged: “Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue.”
Under these circumstances, it would be willfully credulous to assume the administration’s good faith in the Omar investigation. Even if the government ultimately fails to take away her citizenship, as it’s failed in most of its other attempts at political vengeance, it’s sending a message to every foreign-born American. Oppose Trump too loudly, and the government will comb through your paperwork — including paperwork filled out by your parents — for errors that could upend your life.
There is an obvious progression here. This regime has already tried to deport green card holders like Mahmoud Khalil for their political speech. It’s turned hundreds of thousands of Haitians — the group Trump demonized as pet-eating savages — into illegal immigrants overnight by ending their temporary protected status. Now it’s escalated to naturalized citizens. Omar probably won’t be the last. Though Trump has been charmed by New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, other Republicans have called for his deportation. Representative Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, has asked the Justice Department to review Mamdani’s naturalization documents. In the Trumpian schema, some Americans are here by right, and some only on sufferance.
It’s chastening to think back to 2019, when Trump first tweeted that a group of progressive Democratic congresswoman, presumably including Omar, should go back to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” At the time, his bigotry was considered shocking. Four Republicans, as well as the Republican-turned-independent Justin Amash, joined Democrats in passing a House resolution condemning his words. Even Representative Elise Stefanik, who’d go on to become one of Trump’s most slavish lackeys, felt the need to denounce him. “While I strongly disagree with the tactics, policies and rhetoric of the far-left socialist ‘Squad,’ the president’s tweets were inappropriate, denigrating and wrong,” she said.
Now that Trump is acting on his gross rhetoric, the response has been more muted; by mass-producing outrages, the administration has numbed America’s ability to recognize their individual gravity. But it’s worth pausing to recognize that, with Trump’s attempt to banish Omar, we’ve crossed yet another once-unthinkable line.
For now, Trump’s power may be waning as his popularity collapses, but if the Republican Party continues on its current course, the next Republican president is likely to begin where he left off. The logic of this brand of politics moves inexorably toward atrocity.
Here’s Arendt again: “Mass cancellation of naturalizations, such as the one introduced by Nazi Germany in 1933 against all naturalized Germans of Jewish origin, usually preceded denationalization of citizens by birth in similar categories.” If there’s one lesson of the last decade, it’s never believe it can’t happen here.
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