Inhumanity toward Immigrants Is ‘Political Negotiation’

Academics question the Trump administration’s inflammatory methods.

The case of Donald Trump demonstrates the truth behind the old saying that, in politics, form is the backbone of decisions. His verbal abuse and dehumanization of Mexican and Latin immigrants take the traditional U.S. policy against persons living or entering the country illegally to another level, argue researchers at the University of Guadalajara.

The president’s intention is to put pressure on Congress in order to obtain the resources to construct a border wall. Similarly, the intention is to pressure the Mexican government into accepting his demands to renegotiate a more favorable free trade agreement. This is the opinion of immigration experts at Centro Universitario de los Valles, part of the University of Guadalajara.

Although Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, holds the record as “deporter in chief,” having expelled 2.9 million Mexicans during his eight-year administration, Trump changed the rules “… in a way in which verbal xenophobia took over in a cruel manner … I see it as a way of putting pressure on the U.S. Congress so that they pass the policy and give them the money that they need. And he will say, ‘you don’t want to give it to me it to construct a wall, so this is what I am going to do’ (separate children from their families). It is pressure on the Senate, it is pressure on the Mexican government and it also involves an attempt to change the free trade agreement,” says Angélica Navarro Ochoa, coordinator of the master’s program in social-territorial studies.

Enrique Martínez Curiel adds that the immigrants are scapegoats for a part of American society who are most resentful of globalization. “But there is a core rural support of a lower social class, who see themselves attracted to the figure of Donald Trump and helped him to win, and these are the voters that are responding when the leader says, ‘we are going to put up a wall.’ They are happy, believing that Mexican immigration is an infestation and that this is how it will be stopped,” he stated.

Mass deportations are not a new phenomenon. They have existed for decades, but today they are taking on increasingly threatening forms. “First they throw them back over the border, then they take footprints and photographs to intimidate. Now they separate the families and lock up the children. The practice is not new. What is new is this disdain, and how Latino, Mexican and Central American immigrants are treated,” the academic said.

The academics question the lack of “effective programs” to support the repatriates and offer them opportunities. Students in the socio-territorial studies master’s program have documented the human cost.

“According to the thesis of Magdalena Luna, children of parents deported back to Ameca in Guadalajara were treated like the other children when being integrated into the Mexican schools. Their problems were ignored. They found it difficult to adapt when faced with a different model of teaching that they didn’t understand. They arrived as English speakers and they didn’t understand what they were told. The school didn’t do anything. Only their classmates helped,” the researcher said.