“Criminals.” “Animals.” “Rapists.” “Stone cold killers.” These are just some of the labels the current President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has placed on migrants for nearly a decade. What began as the foundation of President Trump’s 2016 campaign escalated into an even more extreme anti-immigrant crusade in 2024. With promises of “the largest deportation operation in American history” hanging overhead, there is a chilling question of what the next four years will look like.
Trump’s continuous hateful rhetoric about migrants has helped amass a significant following while also instilling fear into a growing number of Americans. The uproar amongst Trump loyalists to deport millions of migrants has come to a boiling point with the help of Trump’s strategic use of the illusory truth effect: the more times that information is repeated, the more likely an individual is to believe that information is true. Trump’s manipulative rhetoric hyperbolizes crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and casts their alleged exploitation of jobs as a national emergency.
Despite the buzz it’s created, Trump’s fear-mongering contradicts the facts. There is no evidence that undocumented immigrants are increasing violent crime in America, and economists say there’s no proof that they are affecting job opportunities for Americans.
The Trump administration does not want us to know these truths, however. To achieve this end, they have gone as far as to remove thousands of federal datasets containing information related to DEI, climate change, and, importantly, immigration. In doing my own research, I struggled to find federal information on immigration that Trump’s executive orders have not removed. Spreading misinformation and suppressing the truth are tactics eerily reminiscent of those used by authoritarian leaders and dictators.
Trump’s “us versus them” rhetoric follows the playbook used to justify some of history’s worst atrocities. Although comparing his rhetoric to those of the former dictator of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, may seem extreme, there is great danger in ignoring this parallel. Both Trump and Hitler did not gain popularity overnight; they rose to power by making empty promises that appealed to the public while blaming scapegoats for society’s problems. And Trump is not only using similar tactics—he is directly quoting Hitler. Trump’s description of immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of America is a precise repeat of Hitler’s description of Jewish men in the 1930s and 40s. History has made clear where this path leads, and becoming desensitized to this language risks repeating it.
On his first day back in office, Trump wasted no time reinstating and expanding draconian immigration policies. He made radical orders, such as halting the resettlement of tens of thousands of approved refugees and revoking humanitarian parole for over 500,000 migrants, leaving them stuck in legal uncertainty. While insisting that immigrants should follow the legal citizenship process, President Trump is simultaneously making it even harder to do so.
Within his first day in office, Trump also launched mass ICE deportations supposedly aimed at undocumented immigrants with the worst criminal records. Yet, less than half of those arrested between January 20 and February 2 had a criminal history, revealing that this administration is driven more by xenophobia than genuine national security concerns.
On January 29, Trump’s anti-immigration operations took a disturbing turn. In a shocking statement, he claimed “30,000 beds at Guantánamo Bay” would be used for high-threat undocumented immigrants. For decades, Guantánamo Bay has been synonymous with illegal detainment, torture, and human rights violations of suspected terrorists—all conducted off U.S. soil, where the Constitution doesn’t apply. Now, it appears to be a secretive “legal black hole” for migrants.
Although there has been limited information on what the exact conditions were in Guantánamo Bay, reports from the New York Times suggest detainees received only prepackaged military rations and many prison cells are without working utilities. Dehumanizing rhetoric has real consequences—reducing people to animals paves the way for inhumane treatment.
After facing “major legal, logistical and financial hurdles” at Guantánamo Bay, Trump chose to redirect his deportations to El Salvador and invoke an archaic wartime law, namely the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This law allows the president to “detain, relocate, or deport non-citizens from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime,” giving Trump the ability to deport any individual he deems an “enemy” regardless of that individual’s legal status. This move faced immediate legal pushback, as a federal judge blocked his efforts to invoke the law. Despite this, Trump continues to abuse his power and act against the law.
Since Trump’s deportation process began, authorities have denied detained migrants Due Process, meaning they are facing unconstitutional detainment without trial or legal representation. What’s more, the Trump administration refuses to release the names of those sent to these detention centers. Many families struggle to locate their loved ones, with some identifying them in released images of migrants being transported out of the country.
One such case is Luis Alberto Castillo, whose sister identified him through a TikTok she saw on her phone. Notably, Castillo has no criminal record. Thankfully, there has been pushback as a group of legal aid organizations has sued the Trump administration for denying migrants the right to legal representation.
If Trump’s normalizing and comedizing human rights abuses was not already alarming enough, a recent executive order declared that the death penalty should be a lawful sentence for crossing into the United States illegally. The simultaneous enactment of the Lakin Riley Act, which allows for the detainment of any accused undocumented immigrant without Due Process, makes the possibilities enabled by said order terrifying. These actions against immigrants raise the question: how far will this administration go?
While Trump demonizes immigrants, the actual beneficiaries of his policies are the ultra-wealthy. Billionaires like Elon Musk, who alone poured $270 million into Trump’s campaign, buy influence while everyday Americans struggle to make ends meet. To address economic hardship, we must focus on the real culprits—corporations and the top 1%—who hoard wealth, outsource jobs, and dodge taxes while gutting public services.
Blaming immigrants for job losses is a calculated distraction. The billionaire class thrives on this divide-and-conquer tactic, pitting middle-class workers against the most vulnerable to keep attention away from those truly responsible for wage suppression and economic inequality.
A great misconception fueled by Donald Trump is that undocumented immigrants are leaching off the system at the expense of Americans. However, the facts show that undocumented immigrants contribute billions in taxes while working jobs many Americans either refuse or are unable to fill up—all while the top 1% are planning to receive more tax breaks from the Trump administration. As a billionaire himself, Trump’s fear-mongering is a distraction designed to keep working Americans fighting each other instead of holding the ultra-rich accountable.
This oligarchal government’s use of harmful rhetoric, censored media, and unconstitutional mass detainment and deportation should alarm everyone—regardless of political stance. What we are witnessing is the normalization of human rights abuses under the guise of national security.
Some of the darkest times in history were not that long ago. And if we don’t take unified action, we may soon find ourselves asking: who’s next?
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This article was edited by Sofia Roshan Hope Gellada.
Ava Bedoya 
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