CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Through the tear gas, darkly. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Trump administration is doing everything it can to get rid of what it considers to be “undesirable” people.

The administration has removed temporary protected status (TPS) for more than a million people from over a dozen countries. It is sending people back to active war zones in Sudan and Somalia. It is deporting people to Myanmar, a country under a military dictatorship. In the case of Venezuela, it is returning people to a country struggling to deal with the after-effects of an earthquake.

Some holders of this status have been in the country for a long time. Nearly 90 percent of the 170,000 Salvadorans who have TPS, first granted 25 years ago, participate in the U.S. labor force, contributing over $5 billion to the U.S. economy.

The president makes no exceptions in its campaign to deport anyone and everyone. Even as it has promised to fight a war on behalf of the people of Iran, it has reportedly provided information about Iranian asylum-seekers to the Iranian government. These details about their lives, such as their sexual preferences and religious beliefs, make it even more likely that they will be persecuted on return. Dozens of Russians, who don’t enjoy TPS, were flown back to Russia, where several were immediately slapped with draft notices. Over 4,000 Cubans have been sent to Mexico where they languish in a cruel limbo.

There is no length to which the administration won’t go to deport people, even American citizens like the children born in the United States who were kicked out of the country along with their parents. So far, the Supreme Court has blocked the administration’s attempt to overturn the “birthright citizenship” clause in the U.S. Constitution. But Trump is still pushing his allies to take up the fight in Congress to change the law.

The administration even tried to add 2.7 million living people to the “Death Master File,” which is a database of dead people maintained by the Social Security Administration. Trump’s plan was to make life so difficult for people declared “dead” that they would self-deport or, if they showed up to dispute........

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