Ask a Liberal

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If you don’t like Trump’s deportations, what would you do instead? Who would you deport? It seems like a lot of the protestors think immigration enforcement is illegitimate and just want open borders. Is that true?

Are you fine with Biden letting in millions of illegal immigrants? What, in your view, should the current administration do if not deport them? Just let them all stay?

‍Most Democrats do not support open borders. Less than 30 percent of them say that no immigrants in the country illegally should be deported. Large majorities support deporting those who have committed violent crimes, and nearly half support deporting those who have committed nonviolent crimes. While some progressive elites may support open borders, that is not the view of most Democratic voters.

Data on current immigration enforcement indicate that nearly three quarters of those detained do not have a criminal conviction; those that do are often for minor crimes such as traffic infractions. 97 percent of those recently arrested in Chicago did not have criminal records, and many may have been detained illegally. Truly dangerous people should be deported, but we shouldn’t be sending in heavily armed troops to grab hard-working people, many with families, just because they are missing documents.

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‍Asylum used to be a rare thing for a few people facing egregious persecution, but now we’ve got thousands of people flooding the border, many for economic reasons, who are claiming asylum and overwhelming the system. If you don’t like Trump’s restrictions, what would you do to fix that?

‍It’s important that migrants have the right to claim asylum. We have both legal and moral obligations not to deport people to countries in which they might be tortured or killed. The Trump administration has attempted to shut down the asylum system entirely. It has deported people to South Sudan, a country in the midst of a civil war that is so dangerous that non-essential embassy personnel have been evacuated. Hundreds have been deported to countries they have never been to before.

The real issue with the asylum system is not that people are being allowed to apply, but that there is a massive backlog in immigration court. Rather than turn people away, we should hire more immigration judges. If there are more judges and other resources, those without credible claims of persecution can be properly vetted and sent home, and those with credible claims should be allowed to stay. Nearly 80 percent of the country, including 64 percent of Republicans, say that immigration is good for the US. Nearly half of Fortune 500 companies have been founded by immigrants or their children.

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‍Does Israel have the right to exist and/or defend itself?

‍Israel does have the right to defend itself, but it must still abide by international law. This requires that any response be proportionate and harm to civilians must not be “excessive.” Collective punishment is also against international law; thus some have argued that Israel’s decision to reduce the supply of water, food, fuel, and electricity to Gaza and limit aid supplies is itself a war crime. Hamas has indisputably committed serious war crimes, but this does not allow Israel to respond in kind.

Beyond the legal ramifications is the question of what military objective Israel hopes to accomplish. Despite two years of killing, Hamas is alive and well in Gaza. Peace will require more than a military response, but the Israeli government has shown no indication that it is seriously pursuing a peace deal. It has pre-emptively rejected the idea of a Palestinian state. If Israel won’t allow for a Palestinian state, the only other alternatives are a permanent occupation or ethnic cleansing.

Finally, it’s important to consider the full context of the situation. Hamas did not spontaneously appear from nowhere. In fact, the Israeli government has long tacitly supported Hamas in an effort to weaken other Palestinian groups and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Israeli government included Hamas in talks to increase work permits for Gazans (which keeps money flowing into the enclave), turned “a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza,” and even allowed suitcases full of cash to enter Gaza (to fund Hamas). “Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.”

Israel does have the right to exist, but that doesn’t give it the right to oppress the Palestinians, who have lived under military occupation for decades. Israel has been accused of apartheid by not only human rights groups but Israelis themselves. Former Israeli attorney general Michael Ben-Yair noted that the country was “now an apartheid regime.” Former Mossad head Tamir Pardo concurred that “there is an apartheid state here.” These claims are based on several Israeli policies, primarily involving the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur focused on human rights in occupied Palestinian territories, “the poorest Israeli Jewish settlement in the West Bank enjoys more political, more economic, and more legal rights than the best and most well-off of Palestinian communities living right beside them.” The settlements themselves, which have expanded recently, are in direct violation of international law, which states that an “occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Arab citizens of Israel are allowed to vote, but “face limited opportunities to own land and build homes, along with evictions, differences in immigration policy, and implicit restrictions on social service access.” For example, Israel allows any Jewish person to move to the country and become a citizen; this does not apply to non-Jewish Arabs, even if their ancestors lived in Israel. In 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel was “the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.”

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‍Are you concerned by the rise in antisemitism? College students holding up Hamas flags?

‍The rise in antisemitism and antisemitic incidents on college campuses are concerning, but it’s unfortunately a problem across both parties. Trump has repeatedly failed to condemn Nick Fuentes, a far-right commentator who has praised Hitler and argued that “Jews cannot be part of Western civilization.” Fuentes was recently offered a largely sympathetic interview by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson; while Carlson received some criticism, Trump and the Heritage Foundation came to his defense. Meanwhile, any criticism of Israel is being labeled antisemitism in an attempt to shut down debate.

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Ask a Conservative

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Are you aware that ICE/Border Patrol are targeting people based on how they look and that many US citizens have been injured and locked up for several days? Does that seem a price worth paying?

Do you acknowledge that innocent citizens or even tourists have been taken and held by ICE in brutal conditions? Do you see these people as necessary collateral damage in service to a greater good, kicking out the "bad ones"? Do you think undocumented people should be subjected to brutal conditions in ICE detention facilities? Do you think it's alright to send undocumented people to countries they've never been to, countries that have records of human rights abuses?

‍People shouldn’t be stopped solely because of how they look, but that’s not what is happening. Officers are allowed to take ethnicity into account only as one of several factors. That’s reasonable; officers will often detain individuals who meet the description of a suspect, but that’s not considered racial profiling. Officers are aware that many individuals here illegally are of Hispanic origin; if they see a group of Hispanic men hanging out in a Home Depot parking lot looking for day labor, chances are those people are here illegally. That’s especially true in certain areas like Los Angeles County, where estimates suggest 10 percent of the population is in the country illegally. It’s true that citizens have been mistakenly detained, but they are released as soon as the error is discovered.

Some of the tactics have been brutal, and that’s unfortunate, but it’s also important to send the message that the border is closed. Biden said the opposite and migration exploded. Because Trump has made clear that arrivals will not be allowed in - not even if they claim asylum - potential migrants are staying home. Traffic in the Darien Gap, between Columbia and Panama, has fallen from half a million in 2023 to “almost zero.” Meanwhile, DHS estimates that 1.6 million individuals have voluntarily self-deported, around three times as many as have been deported by authorities.

While it’s unfortunate whenever an American citizen is mistakenly detained or migrants suffer inhumane conditions (which should be corrected/fixed), numerically speaking the Trump administration's immigration policies have been a huge success at reclaiming control of our borders and our sovereignty.

Illegal immigrants are not Americans. They should be sent to their home countries, but if that is not an option, they should be sent to a third country. It makes no sense that people whose home countries reject them (often due to criminal records) would be allowed to stay in the US. It’s unfortunate for them, but they are not our responsibility.

‍One of our libertarian-leaning contributors adds: I am in favor of immigration enforcement, but not like this. I have always been critical of government overreach, particularly involving law enforcement. I have always opposed the war on drugs and the redundant list of “alphabet agencies” who largely exist to suck up resources and trample civil liberties. The recent activities of ICE are just another manifestation of these problems. I have no problem with immigration laws being enforced, but the manner in which it is happening is unacceptable. Government agents cannot act like a secret police, covering their faces and using violence and intimidation against anyone they please. No, the abuses and mistakes that immigration authorities are committing are not a price worth paying. They should do their jobs correctly or not at all.

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‍Does it concern you that Trump is sending American troops into cities without sufficient evidence that there is need for such things? How would you feel if the next Democratic president did this, but only in Republican-run cities?

‍With the exception of DC, which is a special case, the National Guard has been deployed in response to widespread violence against federal agents attempting to enforce immigration law. This is necessary because local police have been refusing to do their jobs and prevent protestors from obstructing or even attacking the federal agents.

In Chicago, a patrol supervisor told local officers not to respond to a call for help from federal agents “when they were attacked and rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.” In Portland, protestors threw fireworks and rocks at officers and shattered the building’s front door; local officers did not respond for hours. Also in Portland, a conservative influencer was hit in the eye with a flagpole; she pointed out her assaulter to local police on the scene, but they refused to make an arrest. If federal officers are unable to do their jobs then calling in the National Guard to protect them is absolutely justified.

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‍Israel has been credibly accused of apartheid and genocide by organizations like the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. As a whole, does the right (with exceptions like Tucker Carlson) believe acknowledging that fact is antisemitic?

‍All of the groups cited have demonstrated significant bias against Israel. The UN Human Rights Council has called more special sessions against Israel than any other country, including three times as many as for Myanmar, which has had an ongoing genocide for nearly a decade. Similar bias exists at Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

While the deaths of Palestinian civilians are regrettable, they do not amount to genocide. That’s true even if Israel has been indifferent to civilian casualties while going after Hamas. According to Israel, nearly half of the casualties in Gaza were combatants: “The civilian-combatant ratio in [Gaza] compares favorably with that in every Western ground operation since World War II.”

Genocide requires intentional targeting of civilians with the intention of destroying an ethnic group. Israel has the military capacity to literally destroy Gaza and kill everyone inside it; it has not done so, and in fact has allowed in aid. Israel supplies Gaza’s water, and has not turned it off. Yet Israel is condemned far more than other countries where unambiguous genocide is occurring. In Sudan, for example, 400,000 have been killed since April 2023 and over 11 million displaced. Focusing on Israel’s shortcomings while ignoring worse conduct elsewhere is a good indicator of potential antisemitism.

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‍Recently, some high-profile conservatives like Rep. Randy Fine and the Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro have implied or outright stated that all Palestinians should die. Are these statements reflective of the pro-Israel movement as a whole? If so, can it really claim the moral high ground over Hamas?

‍While there are some outliers, most pro-Israel conservatives do not want to see innocent Palestinians killed. However, they contend that any civilian casualties in Gaza are the moral responsibility of Hamas, not Israel. Hamas started the war, and have deliberately embedded themselves within civilian areas in order to maximize casualties. They have disclaimed any responsibility for civilians in Gaza, insisting that is the UN’s problem. In 2016 Hamas’s leader explained, “[we] decided to turn that which is most dear to us — the bodies of our women and children — into a dam blocking the collapse in Arab reality.” Hamas could have ended the killing at any time by simply releasing the hostages and disarming, but refused to do so.

It’s also important to keep in mind that Hamas is the most popular party in Gaza. A majority of Palestinians support armed struggle against Israel, and two-thirds agree that “the Oct. 7 attack was a correct decision.” It’s hard to imagine how Israel can ever be expected to co-exist with a group of people that holds such views, let alone give them an independent state.

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