When Dehumanization and “Other-ing” Become Policy

The sitting president’s tendency to dehumanize is well documented. What might not be as commonly known are ways his thinking influences policy, which impacts the lives of real people.

Here is a roundup up of research, analysis, and firsthand accounts about ways that the administration’s policy actions are affecting real people. To Americans, they should be considered to have life as an unalienable right. To Christians, every one is a human being loved by God.

The Policy: Cutting Foreign Aid Via US Agency for International Development

For decades since World War II, the United States used foreign aid to cultivate goodwill abroad, promote democracy and national interests, and benefit people around the world. The money supported global health, humanitarian relief, journalism, education, and democratic reform, among other things.

However, the agency’s work was criticized over the years, with concerns including bribery, waste, conflicts of interest, and involvement in problematic political operations.

Under the second Trump administration, most of USAID’s programs were eliminated.

Data, reporting, and firsthand accounts from around the world paint a bleak picture of the effects of these cuts. More children, women, and men are dying from causes like starvation, tuberculosis, cholera, and AIDS. Officials within the agency warned the administration that cuts would severely impact the health and lives of millions of people. The administration made the cuts, anyway, and celebrated.

The Policy: Terminating Temporary Protected Status

“Temporary Protected Status” is a US government category for certain refugees who are fleeing lands deemed too unsafe for them to return. The Trump administration terminated that status for more than one million people living in the United States, despite the fact that their home countries, like Afghanistan and Haiti, still are tremendously unsafe and/or unstable. The State Department warns Americans not to travel at all to those two nations, yet now our government is sending people back to them.

Afghans who helped the US military in its operations? Too bad – they might be sent back only to be executed by the Taliban.

Haitian CNAs working in your grandmother’s nursing home? We don’t want them, says the administration, so they need to head back to a nation ravaged by gang violence and terrorism.

Make no mistake: Our country is sending people to lands where many face certain death.

The Policy: Keeping Refugees Out (With One Exception)

After welcoming refugees for many decades (see the inscription on the Statue of Liberty), the United States under President Trump now drastically limits them.

For reference, in 1980, more than 200,000 refugees were admitted to the US. In the early 2000s, admissions were capped at around 70,000 and 85,000 annually.

Next year, the number will be 17,500.

The US also is changing what refugees it will embrace. The definition our country used since 1980 has been “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution” due to race, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, religion or national origin. Now, only Afrikaners, or white South Africans, will be admitted. The administration asserts that welcoming this group is in our national interests.

The Trump administration considers the Afrikaners to be victims of unjust racial discrimination. A quick look around the world at how racial and ethnic minorities are treated tells us that many other groups suffer discrimination on that basis, but they are not going to be allowed into the US because of it. Nor are Christians (or other groups) persecuted for their faith, or people fearing violence due to political views. So it is logical to conclude that the administration makes an exception for Afrikaner refugees on the basis of their white ethnicity and/or possibly their economic and political beliefs being aligned with his own.

The Policy: Mass Detention of Immigrants and Mass Deportations

The cost of immigration detention is more than $45,000 per person, per year. Since electronic monitoring (an alternative to incarceration) can cost as little as $120 per year, it seems clear that the policy is not driven by monetary considerations.

Private companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic run a significant number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, and they are making good money doing so. Not surprisingly, the companies running these centers have a history of significant political donations to Trump and related political action committees.

The administration is deporting immigrants at a speedy rate. One social media post by the Department of Homeland Security looked forward to “America after 100 million deportations.” There are nowhere near that many foreign-born people in the US, including legal residents and green card holders. Some commentators wondered if the post referred to a desire to deport native-born US citizens with heritages deemed undesirable to administration officials.

ICE and Customs and Border Protection have been given a goal of 3,000 daily arrests. Critics say that’s leading to racial profiling and indiscriminate arrests that sweep up people here legally.

US citizens who have been arrested as illegal immigrants include combat veteran George Retes of California, Wisconsin-born Aliya Rahman, and Trump voter Esmerelda Doilez.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was present at the arrest of Texas-born Joe Botello.
Some US citizens have been deported, including multiple American children with cancer.

Among the people being detained and deported, their backgrounds vary. The administration is proud to share information about criminals who have been deported. Certainly, some immigrants being removed have been convicted of serious crimes including murder and drug trafficking.

Others are people who lived in the US for decades, building families, paying taxes, and serving their communities, who were here legally but have had their temporary status revoked by the executive branch. Among those whose stories have been told:

a woman who had protested Iran’s repressive regime and was deported to a completely different nation, Central African Republic
multiple spouses married to US citizens and even military service members, who leave behind children when deported
a makeup artist from Venezuela whose tattoos were likely mistaken for gang tattoos
an African woman “sold” at age 14 as a wife who fled a life filled with violence
children somehow expected to represent themselves in immigration court, even when they are babies or toddlers
a Canadian actress in the process of applying for a visa
conservative British political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos
a Haitian woman who was released from ICE custody many miles from home and died from hypothermia
a nurse from Kenya
a Ugandan nun

Many people held in immigration detention report poor conditions. Multiple Members of Congress have been thwarted by DHS when attempting to conduct oversight, though Congress has the statutory authority to do so. Repeated allegations include medical neglect, unsafe drinking water, unsanitary living conditions, and harassment and assault. (To be fair, some of these allegations have spanned multiple administrations.)

The Policy: Chipping Away at Disability Rights

Despite a Supreme Court decision favoring providing services in the community for people with disabilities, the Trump Department of Justice not only declined to defend that right, but joined a lawsuit to attack it. Now families around the nation worry that their loved ones will be removed from their homes and placed in institutions.

Additionally, the federal government published a rule that will have the effect of limiting voter registration drives, which can provide voting access to citizens with disabilities.

The Policy: Institutionalizing More Homeless People

There has been little reporting on the implementation, if any, on an early executive order advocating for mass institutionalization of people who are homeless. I suspect that people without homes don’t have the means to organize, the way other groups do. I am unaware of any data showing what actions have been taken thus far.

I also suspect that if large groups of homeless people disappeared from the streets into unnamed institutions, against their will, they would have little recourse. Many are no longer in touch with loved ones who would have reason to ask about their whereabouts. So they could be rounded up without anyone knowing.

And that is terrifying for anyone interested in civil liberties.

The Policy: Defunding Research

The administration paused or stopped funding hundreds of research projects that might correlate with viewpoints it disliked.

Among the projects affected, temporarily or permanently: research related to conditions including dementia, pregnancy risk, infectious diseases, and cancer, as well as the Women’s Health Initiative research project (later reinstated).

Conclusion

Trump advisors stated an aim of overwhelming political opponents in part through information overload. I’m sure there are numerous executive orders and other policy efforts I don’t even know about. I might agree with some if I knew about them; who knows?

But I see a pattern in the policies I have listed here: They attempt to eliminate protections for vulnerable people, people I see specifically cited in Scripture as important to God.