after an initial flurry of worthless 'hope', i'm without any optimism for the trump game;

Trump’s ICE raids feel performative as the actual number of illegal immigrants deported is not that much. For a while, ICE was releasing illegal immigrants due to limited capacity in detention spaces. There is this performative cruelty of singling out a small number of people as a deterrent or to scare migrants to self-deport. Just deport a completely random set of people, but not many in actual numbers, and then heavily publicize it to set a warning for future migrants. The essence of Trump is about the spectacle rather than substance. However, Trump’s one area of success is that new border crossings are at the lowest level in decades.........more...........