Lewis Carroll redux
The story of MAGA America is a 21st-century retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland seen through Orwell's doublethink lens. In this logic-free universe, Trump is the fittest man ever to be President. Tax cuts shrink the deficit. Tariffs lower prices. Universal healthcare is achieved by making it more expensive. And Trump's campaign to reduce drug crime in America involves a reduction in arrests for drug crimes.
An anti-crime policy that doesn’t fight crime
The New York Times explains the last in an article titled: "Drug Arrests and Gun Seizures Fell as Homeland Security Pursued Immigration." The subhead fleshes out the news: "Internal documents reveal the impact on crime fighting as the Trump administration diverts special agents to its mass deportation agenda. The article begins:
Amid President Trump's immigration crackdown, special agents at the Homeland Security Department have made fewer arrests for drug crimes and seized fewer weapons than they did the previous fiscal year, according to internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The paper puts numbers to the decline. Saying that "among the key figures in the documents":
- Narcotics arrests fell by roughly 11%.
- Agents opened 15% fewer investigations into narcotics crimes.
- The number of weapons seized fell dramatically, declining from nearly 41,400 to fewer than 11,200 — a 73% drop.
- The number of indictments for child exploitation crimes fell 28%. And agents identified or rescued roughly 300 fewer child victims, a 17% drop.
The NYT gives the reason.
The numbers reflect a shift in priorities as top officials at the department pulled special agents off drug, gun and other complex criminal investigations under pressure from the White House to deport more undocumented immigrants, current and former federal officials told The Times.
This is not the first time the NYT has pointed out that Trump's anti-immigrant initiative has reduced federal effectiveness in fighting the crimes Trump promised the initiative would reduce. A week ago, the paper ran another article titled "Homeland Security Missions Falter Amid Focus on Deportations." With the subhead: Under President Trump, an agency intended to keep Americans safe has diverted resources from combating child abuse, trafficking and terrorism.
In it, the NYT reveals that
- Homeland security agents investigating sex crimes against children have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown, hampering their pursuit of child predators.
- A national security probe into the black market for Iranian oil sold to finance terrorism has been slowed down for months because of the shift to immigration work, allowing tanker ships and money to disappear.
- And federal efforts to combat human smuggling and sex trafficking have languished, with investigators reassigned to help staff deportation efforts.
The administration says people should ignore these facts and instead focus on the more than 46,000 (41%) increase in arrests reported by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the agency's crime-fighting arm. However, that increase includes those arrested for being in the US illegally, but who have broken no other laws — ie, immigrants whose actions did not harm any citizens.
The empire fights back
The administration isn't taking the NYT's reiteration of the facts gracefully. Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS shill, accused the NYT of “Peddling a false narrative!”
And Abigail Jackson, a WH spokeswoman, said The Times was "cherry-picking" statistics. Then she dismissed the administration’s decline in drug arrests and weapon seizures by saying those could "fluctuate from year to year".
However, Jackson damaged her narrative by failing to provide statistics for previous years. And by not explaining which types of arrests accounted for the overall increase. So, who's cherry-picking the statistics now?
The leopard cannot change its spots
None of this should surprise us. In 2016, candidate Trump promised a Mexican-paid-for border wall; cheaper, more universal healthcare; 25 million new jobs; and 3.5% annual GDP growth over the next decade. Incumbent Trump didn't come close.
In 2024, candidate Trump, now unperturbed by any threat of dissent from a subservient GOP, was even more exuberant in his proclamations. He promised more ponies and lollipops. Vote right, he said, and you'll be rich, safe, drug-free, proud to be an American, and the envy of the world. He swore he would rid the nation of illegal aliens. And once those criminal, job-stealing, benefit-vacuuming lazy bastards were in the rear-view, the US of A would be so great, the English-speaking, Christian God would shower the citizens with high-quality riches available, for a small markup, at the Trump store.
As it was before, it is again. The more hot air the gas bag expels, the faster America falls from its historic heights. Unicorn rhetoric has given way to concrete failure.
