The President Violently Targets Immigrants, but Pardons Drug Traffickers

Maribel Hastings

Posted Dec. 11, 2025

The Trump administration has not needed excuses to launch a violent crackdown on immigrants and anyone who looks “foreign,” even if they are citizens, so it is not surprising that he would exploit the ambush of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. by an Afghan citizen to intensify his anti-immigrant crusade.

Trump is applying what The Wall Street Journal and others describe as “collective punishment” against the rest of the Afghans who helped the United States during the 20 years it occupied that nation before the Taliban regime regained power. Afghans who return to their country would face certain death at the hands of a government that considers them traitors.

Many of the more than 190,000 Afghans who entered the United States through the Operation Allies Welcome program are now in limbo as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has indefinitely halted immigration adjustment applications from Afghans, including asylum.

Prejudice and racism drive his immigration policy.

It is a case of the innocent paying for the sins of the guilty, because the wrongdoings of one affect an entire community. It is as if one American committed a crime and all Americans were branded criminals because of the actions of a single individual.

But the excesses now go beyond Afghans. Last Tuesday, the suspension of immigration adjustments, including residency and citizenship, was announced for citizens of 19 nations considered high risk, including Cuba and Venezuela. The list includes Somalis, the target of a diatribe by Trump on December 2nd, who labeled them “garbage.” In fact, Minnesota, home to a large Somali community, most of whom are authorized residents, appears to be the next target of Trump’s operations.

The ban on travel and protected immigration benefits such as refuge and asylum, as well as authorized immigration to the United States, has always been in the administration’s sights. But now, after the fatal shooting on Thanksgiving Eve, Trump feels that anything goes.

Let us remember that during his first term in office, he expressed his rejection of immigration from what he called “shithole countries” such as Haiti and African nations, lamenting that more Norwegians were not entering the United States. Prejudice and racism drive his immigration policy.

Now DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is leading the charge by promoting a travel ban on what she called “invading” countries, the conspiracy theory that there is an “invasion” across the southern border that justifies all her excesses.

Legal and pro-immigrant groups are still trying to figure out what all the immigration restrictions that the Trump administration plans to implement consist of. But they are sure to face legal challenges in the courts, where battles are also being waged over violent ICE and Border Patrol operations in Democratic-led cities.

Although the Trump administration insists it is targeting criminals, the numbers tell a different story. The Washington Post reported that of the 4,000 arrests made during the Midway Blitz operation in Chicago, only 120 had criminal records.

Trump deployed the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and other cities without justification as part of a political theater to create a crisis where there was none to implement his extremist and violent immigration policies to terrorize the immigrant community into self-deportation. But his net has also apprehended and abused U.S. citizens who are victims of racial profiling.

Trump also diverts resources from various federal agencies to devote everything to his anti-immigrant war, neglecting areas such as the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking.

On this last issue, Trump’s strategy is full of contradictions. On the one hand, he diverts agents and resources. He replaces them with the bombing of alleged drug traffickers’ boats in the Caribbean Sea while flirting with military intervention in Venezuela.

At the same time, he displays unparalleled double standards and hypocrisy because while he claims to be fighting drug trafficking, he pardons drug traffickers such as former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. Hernández was serving a 45-year prison sentence for conspiring to bring more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.

In other words, if the drug trafficker is right-wing, there is no problem. Trump only seems to have issues with left-wing drug traffickers or “narco-communists,” as he calls them.

Trump violently pursues and deports immigrants who contribute to this country, but pardons drug traffickers.

Maribel Hastings is a Senior Advisor to América’s Voice.