WHEN I VISITED MCALLEN, TEXAS, IN 2018, THE STANDoff at the U.S.-Mexico border was starting to feel like DEFCON 1. The Trump administration had imposed a "zero-tolerance policy" and was separating children from their parents. Much of America, and the world, was horrified. And that was kind of the point. The logic of family separation was simple and brutal: Make it terrible to come to this country so that people will stop coming. I saw the human toll of this approach written on the faces of detainees as I peered through the chain-link fences at a Border Patrol processing facility in the Rio Grande Valley.
Tough but effective, the policy's defenders might argue-except the strategy didn't work. Border "encounters," in which authorities detain or expel someone arriving at the southern border, rose for much of 2018 and spiked in 2019.
Fast-forward to January of this year and President Biden's trip to El Paso-a calculated show of strength. The president has been playing defense on immigration for his first two years in office. Family separation formally ended in the summer of 2018 and, with Trump residing at Mar-a-Lago rather than the White House, talk of a "big, beautiful" border wall has faded. But the fearmongering about migrants that Trump unleashed lives on. Some U.S. politicians now speak about people who want to come to this country almost exclusively as hordes of invaders bent on destroying America. The governors of Texas and Florida have taken to busing and flying new migrants to northeast cities to stick it to the libs. Right-wing pundits, meanwhile, have relentlessly accused the Biden administration of enabling a full-blown border crisis.
Denne historien er fra March 2023-utgaven av Esquire US.
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Denne historien er fra March 2023-utgaven av Esquire US.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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This Guy Stood Up to Trump - Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, rebuffed Donald Trump's demand to find” votes for him in 2020—and received death threats. Now Trump is back on the ballot, and the pressure is mounting from all sides. Can he once again deliver a fair election?
Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, rebuffed Donald Trump's demand to find” votes for him in 2020—and received death threats. Now Trump is back on the ballot, and the pressure is mounting from all sides. Can he once again deliver a fair election?Brad Raffensperger is rattling off statistics while we wait. It's just after 4:00 P.M. on Tuesday, May 21, and the Georgia secretary of state is standing outside a small conference room in an underground bunker on the east side of Atlanta, where he and his staff gather on election days. A couple dozen workers are spread around an open seating area, quietly fielding phone calls and staring at their computer monitors. With its fluorescent lights and gray carpet, the place has the muted feel of a regional sales office. The secretary, though, is energized. As the official in charge of overseeing elections in his state, Raffensperger is always ready to dive into the details.
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