"The worst of the worst"

A graduate student who wrote an op-ed. A high school student on his way to volley ball practice. A college student hoping to surprise her parents at Thanksgiving. These are but three of hundreds if not thousands of the people snatched by Donald Trump’s masked paramilitary force.

An Afghan vetted by the Central Intelligence Agency to fight against the Taliban? Welcome to the United States.

The Trump regime’s definition of “the worst of the worst” immigrants is certainly different than mine. Or civilized society.

The death of a West Virginia National Guard member and the serious wounding of another on the streets of Washington D.C. is most assuredly a tragedy. But it is a tragedy that should never have happened.

The deployment of federalized troops on the streets of the nation’s Capitol was a public relations stunt conjured up by Trump, Reichsmarschall Stephen Miller and the nation’s cabinet of misfit toys.

It was staged to show Trump was tough on crime and “illegal aliens” who he claimed had taken over Washington. But they were deployed in tourist areas and not in some of the city’s rougher neighborhoods.

And the soldiers attacked by Rahmanullah Lakanwal were standing watch outside a Metro station at 17th and I streets — near the White House. Trump, by the way, was almost a thousand miles away, playing golf at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump, Miller, “Border Czar” Tom Homan and Customs and Border Protection chief Gregory Bovino have staged several PR ops —most notably in Los Angeles and Chicago — along with countless smash and grabs in communities large and small across the nation.

Statistics show more than 65,000 people currently in custody, of which 73.6 percent have no criminal record. And Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi “Cosplay” Noem claims more than 1.5 million people have been deported.

They include people like Babson College student Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, snatched at Logan Airport and sent to Honduras because a removal order had been issued for her in 2017. An order she never received.

Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, told The Boston Globe the orders can be issued in immigration court when people are not physically present, and notifications are often mailed to old addresses.

“For decades, the United States government has not prioritized those people for removal.”

Worst of the worst?

A foundational legal principle is that everyone — citizen and non-citizen — is entitled to due process under the 5th and 14th amendments.

But that eludes the first person ever tried and convicted by a jury of his peers yet still able to sit in the the Oval Office.

That didn’t stop him from putting on quite a performance for reporters — denying any responsibility for the tragedy, passing it off onto Joe Biden, who was president in 2021 when Lakanwal entered the U.S. as part of a program designed for those Afghans who protected and served Americans.

And who was given asylum under Trump in April.

His exchange with reporters is worth highlighting in some detail:

“He was vetted and the vetting came up clean,” the reporter pointed out.

“He went cuckoo. I mean, he went nuts, and that happens too. It happens too often with these people.”

But Trump insisted that Afghan migrants were allowed in with no screening, and held up a photo of a crowded plane of asylum-seekers:

“There was no vetting or anything, they came in unvetted.”

“Actually, your DOJ IG just reported this year that there was thorough vetting by DHS and by the FBI of these Afghans who were brought into the U.S.. So why do you blame the Biden administration?”

“Because they let ’em in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came into on a plane along with thousands of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.

“You can’t get them out once they come in.”

By the way, the reporter he called stupid was a woman.

But Trump was not done. He took to social media to declare he would “permanently pause” migration from all “Third World Countries” and vet everyone previously approved under the Biden administration. And he threatened to end all federal benefits and subsidies for “non-citizens.”

Define Third World countries. Do they include South Africa, from where Trump is allowing only Afrikaner settlers he claims to have been victims of “white genocide” to enter?

And as part of his cheerful holiday greeting to “all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being ‘Politically Correct,’ and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration” Trump went yet one more step beyond, pledging to:

“…[D]enaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility” and deport any foreign national deemed a public charge, security risk, or “non-compatible with Western civilization.”

Denaturalization is a very specific process and can only be done through judicial order either through civil proceedings or a criminal conviction for naturalization fraud.

Never fear though, he did offer some holiday cheer, of sorts:

“Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!”

The call for denaturalization would seem to go hand-in-hand with his call to end birthright citizenship, granted under the 14th Amendment — something we’re waiting to see if the Supremes are willing to countenance under the “official acts” safety net they afforded him in Trump v. U.S.

It got me to thinking about my status as a journalist — who Trump classifies as an “enemy of the people.” I’m a first generation American, whose parents were legally in the United States under green cards and were naturalized and became citizens. It would seem to give me birthright citizenship.

But by his definition I would also be among the “worst of the worst"?