Late last year, Donald Trump’s White House published a new National Security Strategy (NSS) outlining its vision for the world. At the time, the plan raised alarm for dismissing European alliances (now largely confirmed after Trump threatened Nato allies over Greenland), previewing interventions in Latin America (also largely confirmed by recent military action in Venezuela), and aligning closely with the priorities of the Kremlin.

The document also demonizes immigrants. In one widely cited passage, it even claims that “unchecked migration” has gotten so out of control that Europe is facing imminent “civilizational erasure”. On these grounds, the plan makes ending “The Era of Mass Migration” a top priority for the US.

It is one of the great marvels of our time that, in a world where governments spend more on border security than ever before, build more miles of border fencing than ever before, deploy more military-grade technology to stop migration than ever before, spend more on detention and deportation than ever before, and knowingly cause thousands of preventable deaths every year by cutting off safe routes to migrate, people in power can look at the disastrous consequences of this system and unironically proclaim: “You know what our problem is? Open borders!”

This is essentially what the NSS is saying, though, to be fair, it did not originate this marvel of modern absurdity. During the Biden administration, for example, after arrests at the border hit record highs, deportations spiked, and record numbers of asylum seekers piled into overcrowded shelters and hotels (de facto detention centers since they were not allowed to legally work or otherwise participate freely into society), a Republican senator from my home state of Texas whined that all of this amounted to a “radical experiment in open borders”. Not to be outdone, his Democratic opponent at the time made similar claims.

The NSS still distinguishes itself, however, by applying this inverted way of thinking far beyond the Biden years, even to the point of making sweeping generalizations about the history of nations. As a historian of border policy, I find this part of the NSS particularly noteworthy.

You can find the passage in question at the bottom of page 11, where the........

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