Even if Trump’s term in office ends without drama in 2028, the country will face a major dilemma in dealing with all of the government criminality that will have taken place over the past four years.

For one thing, Trump may decide to use his pardon power to pardon his political appointees and his buddies for all crimes they may have committed and for all crimes for which they may be charged not only during his administration, but at any time thereafter. His power to do this would obviously be tested in the courts, and the Supreme Court will remain at least 6-3 Trumpian, so who knows how that will work out. But if the Court upholds the power of a president to pardon individuals for unindicted crimes, future crimes, and indefinite crimes, the Court would create a caste of people who are indeed above the law, so that may give it pause.

But in addition, the new president will be taking over a very divided and polarized country and will have its reunification as an important task. Every indictment of a presumed Trumpian criminal will be a strike against reconciliation, so a balanced approach will be required. It will not be easy.

I am not expert enough to say how much of the activity of ICE is illegal. I can tell you how much I think should be illegal, and how much I think is immoral, but I can’t go beyond that. Or maybe I can, by adding one more category. I can tell you how much I think is just plain unneccessary.

The answer is: most of it. From what I have read again and again, both Eisenhower and Obama led movements to deport people who came into this country illegally in greater numbers than Trump has accomplished. When Eisenhower did this, it was easier for the government to work outside of the public eye, of course, but this was not the case during the Obama years. Yet Obama’s administration was able to deport over 3 million individuals (that is the number I have seen) without anything like this amount of conflict or protest.

What does this mean? Of course, it might mean that the folks running Homeland Security and ICE are, compared to Obama’s crew, incompetent. My guess is that this is the case (based on general observation of virtually everyone Trump has appointed to any position anywhere: competence competes with loyalty, and loyalty is favored), but also that it is a secondary reason for all the turmoil. The primary reason is that turmoil is exactly what Trump wants.

After all, much of his campaign was based on Biden’s immigration failures, so it becomes important not only to correct those failures, but to demonstrate beyond a doubt that those failures are being addressed. The way you do this is by transforming a relatively routine policing activity into something that will grab the media’s attention (collateral damage, be damned) and allow you do say “Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden”.

I am not a fan of how Biden ran the southern border. If you look at early issues of this blog, you will see that, starting in 2022 or 2023, I said that the situation at the southern border was going to lose the 2024 election for the Democrats. And indeed it did. But we are where we are.

Trump has “closed” the southern border. I am not sure exactly what is happening on the Mexican border. I don’t know if anyone is getting in legally, or by sneaking in. But obviously things have changed there, no one is complaining about that as far as I can see, and certainly the media is paying no attention to this. As far as I can tell, this is a Trump success. At least for the time being, until we (the country, we) figure out what our immigration policy is (now, we have none, of course, and that is another big problem).

We have all sorts of immigrants in our country. Most of them are not “illegals”, although that is how Trump describes them and has done so consistently enough that not only MAGA but the media in general seems to fall in line. But the only “illegals” are those who came across the border illegally. (I know this is not fully the case; we have a large number of people who came into the country legally, but have overstayed their visas; this group has only been sporadically targeted by Trump.)

The largest group was admitted into the country on a temporary basis while their applications for asylum, or refugee status, or whatever, are being processed. Of course, we don’t have a sufficient infrastructure to process these applications on anything like a timely basis, and never have had. So, letting them in as Biden did was based on a sort of fiction, but nevertheless, the country did admit them, and, as long as their cases are still pending, they are not “illegal”, although they are now typically referred to as such.

And then there are others: individuals given temporary protection because they are from certain chaotic countries (such temporary protection often is not very temporary, understandably), or green card holders, or others legitimately admitted on various other bases.

As is often said, the vast majority of all of these groups become “good” residents, working (even where legally not permitted to), paying taxes, raising families, etc., and the number of criminals are much lower than the number of criminals in the larger American population. Of course, this means nothing to Trump, who makes it appear that virtually all immigrants are murderers, rapists, or drug dealers.

Trump started by saying that the “criminals” would be kicked out of the country. But that soon became a meaningless category, because suddenly anyone who came into the country during the Biden years was denoted as a “criminal”.

What would make the most sense of course would be to go after the criminals, and perhaps after those who swam across the border illegally and were never processed and are thus not “in the system”, and to do this as much as possible out of the public eye. But this is of course not what Trump is doing. He is doing the opposite.

By having masked, undisciplined ICE officers roam the streets, stopping people at will, asking for identification that they are not required to carry, beating people, handcuffing them, capturing them in schools, churches, and even at government hearings they are required to attend,  taking them away to detention centers without notifying family members or giving them a chance to contact anyone, and so forth, Trump is embarking on a campaign to firm up his base (I guess) and further divide the country, both for political purposes (enabling him to attack Democratic mayors and governors for allowing violence in the streets) or to divert from his other crimes and follies.

Unless the Supreme Court stops it (which it will not), all of this will continue and deepen during the next three years. We have not hit bottom yet. And it will be up to the next president to end it.

I hope that the Democrats can figure out how to respond to this correctly. I hope that they don’t adopt the mantra “ABOLISH ICE”, because this is just what Trump wants them to do. He wants to make ICE so disruptive that the Democrats will call for the abolition of the agency and Trump and the Republicans can then argue that the Democrats want to go back to the Biden era, open the southern border and let everyone in.

The Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2028 will need to establish a firm immigration/deportation policy that will not cater to extremes on either side. It must be inclusive in that it deals with all aspects of immigration, it must be fair to those who came into the country legally, it must be practical, it must be humane. I hope someone is developing this policy as we speak; it is not something that can be accomplished in a week or two.

In the meantime, the Democrats must realize (a) they committed big mistakes during the Biden years and they should admit to them, (b) how important immigration is to the country, (c) how people in the country should be treated fairly and their situations adjudicated fairly, (d) and how criminal activity on part of people in the immigration system will not be tolerated, and (e) how ICE will be reformed to carry out its purposes within the limits of law, and not undertake activities which go beyond those purposes. They should understand that Trump will try to force them into extremist positions for his own political sake, and that they must not swallow that bait.