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By Emily Yates-Doerr | Trump’s fear-mongering about the border helped get him elected in 2016. Seeking reelection, he regularly describes the U.S. as an “occupied country” that has been “invaded and conquered” by immigrant criminals. He promises screaming crowds that Election Day will be “Liberation Day in America,” at which point he will throw immigrants in jail or send them back home.
But the threat of mass deportation is designed to sow division, not to address the challenges posed by immigration. During his last presidency, Trump spent $15 billion on an unfinished and easily scalable border wall and millions of dollars on deportations. Meanwhile, rates of undocumented immigration actually rose during his presidency.
His new immigration agenda will do nothing to deter people from seeking a better life in a country that bears responsibility for creating many of the conditions that cause them to flee.
Over the past 20 years, I have worked as an anthropologist in a Guatemalan region where communities have been torn apart by U.S. immigration. Everyone has family members who have left, and almost everyone knows someone who has died or disappeared attempting to cross the border. My research examines U.S.-led health and development interventions, many of which have been designed to stem the flow of U.S. migration. I have learned by studying the history and contemporary deployment of these interventions that there are three things the U.S. government must do to address immigration. None entails policing the U.S. border, and none are prioritized by U.S. politicians today.
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