The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies are racist and are intended to send even documented Global South immigrants and naturalized citizens out of the country. The evidence is clear, but the media cover up what is very obvious.

A recent headline on the BBC website read, “US has let in 4,499 refugees since October – all but three were South African.” The BBC was strangely imprecise in its language and didn’t point out the elephant in the room. The 4,499 South Africans designated as refugees and admitted to the U.S. are all white, unlike the majority of people in that country. Despite a well-coordinated effort claiming that white South Africans are victims of a genocide, they are, in fact, still most of the landowners and own almost all of the country’s wealth. South African presidents and other politicians may be Black, and a handful of Black people have been allowed to get rich in the post-apartheid era, but still the Afrikaners and other white people are the most prosperous South Africans.

The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) was created in 1980 with federal legislation and, since that time, has admitted 3 million people, who by law must face persecution or have a well-founded fear of persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. None of these criteria apply to white South Africans, but they are now the only people being admitted to the U.S. as refugees.

There is no logic to this turn of events unless one is willing to understand the logic of racism and white supremacy. Stephen Miller, who serves as the Trump administration’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Adviser, makes it all quite clear. He repeatedly posts bizarre and racist statements on the X social media platform, such as this rant, “Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids. Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinite migrants from the third world.”

I’m not sure why watching two great performing artists would lead one to think about immigration, unless such a thought was in reference to Sinatra and Martin, both being the children of immigrants from Italy. But unlike the BBC, Miller was quite clear. European immigration, white immigration, is the ideal. He does not want third-world immigrants, meaning Black and brown people from the Global South. He does not evade the issue, unlike the BBC or the New York Times, which oddly asserts that Miller is pursuing his agenda “more quietly.” Miller is very open in his racism when he attacks the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which admitted more immigrants from the Global South. “What you saw between 1965 and today was the single largest experiment on a society, on a civilization, that had ever been conducted in human history,” and added, “With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful — again, Somalia is a clear example … but you see very persistent issues in every subsequent generation. You see consistent high rates of welfare use, high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.” 

The greatest experiment in human history was the genocide against the original inhabitants of what is now known as the Americas and the enslavement of Africans, but facts are beside the point. There is no evidence that immigrants are more likely to access public assistance or to commit crimes. None of what Miller says is true, but he and his boss are clear in wanting to end avenues for legal immigration to the U.S. for people of color.

In recent months, the Trump administration has moved to prevent the naturalization of people from Haiti and other countries designated as “high risk.” People from these 19 nations, Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Myanmar (Burma), Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen, who had met all the requirements to be naturalized were suddenly informed that the years of paperwork, tax filings and FBI background checks were not good enough. Some of them had actually appeared at naturalization ceremonies only to be turned away. Not only can citizens of these nations not be naturalized, they cannot obtain green cards or apply for visas. The nations of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan and Syria were added to that list and citizens of Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia and Zimbabwe are restricted from receiving student, exchange and visitor visas. 

As if there was any doubt that keeping Black people out of the U.S. was a Trump administration priority, the president himself continues to focus his obsessions on Black immigrants. Haitians are a particular focus of his hatreds and he proved it by posting a video of a murder committed by a Haitian man on his Truth Social platform.

“The video of her brutal slaying is one of the most vicious things you will ever see. This animal was allowed to stay here because the Biden Administration granted him, and all Haitians, ‘Temporary Protective Status,’ a massively abused and fraudulent program which my Administration is working to terminate, but Deranged Liberal District Court Judges are standing in our way… As I’ve said all along, if you import the Third World, you become the Third World, and that is what happened over the four years of Democrat Control.” 

Trump is known for doing things no other president would, but posting a video of a murder is unique even for him. Although if one considers that he accused Haitians of eating dogs and cats, a snuff video is actually not unusual.

Yet again, the racism, the very open bias of the Trump administration, is clear for all to see but is rarely mentioned as such. Now, even naturalized citizens are not safe. Denaturalization was once rare, and involved allegations of fraud in the application process. But Trump and Miller have chosen an arbitrary number of denaturalizations, 100 to 200 every month, when only 120 denaturalizations occurred between 2017 and 2025.  

A recent study shows that the Trump administration has cut legal immigration numbers in half, much more than its cuts to undocumented migration. This statistic proves that arguments against undocumented immigrants are actually a smoke screen meant to obscure the effort to cut all immigration from the Global South. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suspended processing many green card applications, allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest legal immigrants, including refugees, asylees, and spouses of US citizens. The agency responsible—US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—has worked with ICE to set these legal immigrants up for arrests by failing to process their applications.” 

It is worth remembering that the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, all settled by English-speaking Europeans, have periodically limited or banned non-white immigrants. Having invaded the lands of brown-skinned people, they all proceeded to declare their countries as white-only. “The black people there have increased to such an extent, and have gained such power, that the jurists and statesmen there pause and look with fear upon them,” said an Australian speaking of Black Americans during a 1901 immigration debate. Canada once excluded any race, “… deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada,” and the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe and banned most Asians entirely. White people invaded other nations and then proceeded to declare them as fit for whites only.

There were protests and outrage expressed when bans on immigration from certain countries took place during the first Trump administration. Now the response is muted and racism is rarely mentioned as the cause of the immigration crackdowns and plans to build warehouses across the country for the purpose of incarcerating immigrants. 

In California, the Border Patrol violated a federal judge’s orders to end sweeps, in New Jersey, court orders were violated in immigration cases more than 50 times in 10 weeks, and in West Virginia, immigrants are wrongly held in jails across the state. The goal in each case is the same, to make America whiter again, but the trend is rarely described in that way.

Of course, the U.S. will not get any whiter. In their desperation, Trump and Miller may investigate naturalized citizens or ban new immigrants, but they cannot reverse hundreds of years of history, and they can’t get rid of millions of people they want to send away. They can make their lives miserable, they can break laws, and defy their MAGA base, who are no more enthusiastic about immigrant jail warehouses being located in their communities than are residents of blue states.

They may import racist white South Africans, but they can’t undo the 3 million refugees admitted before the Afrikaners were. The U.S. non-white population is growing and Trump and Miller can’t stop it. Unfortunately, they will deprive thousands of people of their rights in the process of failing and as they do it, their primary motivation will go largely unmentioned. 

Denial is also a trait of white supremacy. The overt racists constantly declare themselves to be such, while others look away and do little if anything to confront them.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.