SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
us imperialism
3 Steps for a Just Immigration System: Abolish ICE, Grant Amnesty, End US Imperialism
We need a new system of immigration—one that serves the common good, respects the dignity of all peoples, and aligns with the principles of a democratic society.
Mar 07, 2026
On February 26, federal agents lied to gain access to a residential building. The agents, who local officials said lacked a warrant and wore “fake badges” to impersonate New York police officers, said they were looking for a “missing child.” In reality, they were hunting for Elmina Aghayeva, a Columbia University student who the Department of Homeland Security alleges had her visa terminated “for failing to attend classes.”
Due to the efforts of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Aghayeva has since been released. Still, the incidence speaks volumes to the level of normalized cruelty and injustice inherent in our current system of immigration control and enforcement. Aghayeva is not “the worst of the worst.” Even if we accept DHS’ assessment that she needed to be detained, there was a way of doing this lawfully—one where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents acquire a warrant, clearly identify themselves, respect her rights, and do not further erode public trust in law enforcement.
We need a new system of immigration—one that serves the common good, respects the dignity of all peoples, and aligns with the principles of a democratic society. Here are three steps we can take toward that end.
First Step: Abolish ICE
What was once a fringe position is now supported by the majority (76%) of Democrats and a plurality of US adults (46%).
While the Trump administration’s disregard for the rule of law has made ICE’s injustices more blatant, it has ultimately only exposed what the agency has been since its inception.
Given recent events, this turn is unsurprising. In the last year alone, ICE agents have: broken into people’s cars (Mahdi Khanbabazadeh and Marilu Mendez), used explosives to break into people’s homes (Jorge Sierra-Hernandez), pressed their knees into people’s necks (Tatiana Martinez and George Retes), kidnapped people (Kilmar Ábrego Garcia and Gladis Yolanda Chavez Pineda), detained hundreds of children including 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, detained over 170 US citizens including Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez and Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales, shot people (Carlitos Ricardo Parias and Jose Garcia-Sorto), permanently maimed people (Kaden Rummler), and killed people (Silverio Villegas González, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti).
In the name of pursuing people who commit fewer crimes than US citizens, actively contribute to the US economy, pay taxes for public services they cannot access, and culturally enrich our communities, ICE acts with reckless abandonment.
And let’s be clear: While the Trump administration’s disregard for the rule of law has made ICE’s injustices more blatant, it has ultimately only exposed what the agency has been since its inception: a lawless, bloated policing and surveillance behemoth with virtually no oversight. It was a mistake created in the frenzy following 9/11. For the good of the nation, it must be abolished (and DHS too).
Second Step: Grant Amnesty
Rather than mass deportation, we should offer amnesty for all undocumented immigrants currently living in the US who have not committed any violent crimes.
The problems with ICE stem from its basic mission: to find and deport the over 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. Since the vast majority are law-abiding and legal status is not an observable trait, ICE agents resort to more invasive, discriminatory, and militant measures. Any alternative to ICE tasked with the same mission will likely replicate its problems.
The irony here is that deporting all undocumented immigrants would only harm the US. According to the Center for Migration Studies, Trump’s mass deportation plan “could cost over $500 billion to implement and would sacrifice billions in tax revenue per year. It also would lead to labor shortages and reduce the GDP by $5.1 trillion over the next 10 years.” By contrast, providing undocumented immigrants with amnesty would contribute $1.2 trillion to the US economy over 10 years and $184 billion per year in federal, state, and local taxes.
We cannot continue to indiscriminately violate international law and then complain when America’s victims come here seeking a better life.
That money could be used to improve the lives of millions by funding Medicare For All, tuition-free public colleges, city-owned grocery stores, and SNAP and other welfare programs, as well as building public housing and improving our crumbling infrastructure. Instead, we are actively engaging in an absurd policy of national self-harm where the only benefactors are the politicians who continuously scapegoat immigrants as well as corporations who benefit from surveilling, imprisoning, and exploiting their labor.
Beyond economic considerations, amnesty safeguards our democracy and protects human rights. The current immigration regime perpetuates racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, while ICE agents terrorize our communities and threaten all our lives.
Trump’s mass deportation agenda calls for separating undocumented immigrants from their friends, families, and communities. This includes 86 DACA recipients that ICE deported last year. Those people had lived in the US for most of their lives, respected its laws, and considered it their home. Now, they are being sent to an unfamiliar country—one where they may not know the language, culture, or anyone living there.
What’s more, many immigrants come to the US fleeing violence and persecution abroad. Deportation often entails purposely putting people’s lives at risk. As Farah Larrieux, a 46-year-old Haitian currently on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), said: “All these people are here because they were forced to come. […] They came to save their lives. For many, returning to Haiti now is, in practice, a death sentence, making them vulnerable to extortion and kidnapping.” If DHS succeeds in terminating TPS for Haitians, our tax dollars would go toward effectively funding her execution.
Third Step: End American Imperialism
Whether it's Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Gaza, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, or so many other nations, US interventionist policies fuel political instability abroad.
American imperialism must end. We cannot continue to invade, bomb, and wage wars that fuel the very mass displacement and migration that create the “border crisis.” We cannot continue to indiscriminately violate international law and then complain when America’s victims come here seeking a better life. They are not the “foreign invaders” who infiltrated “our homeland”—America invaded theirs. They have not “destroyed our country”—we destroyed theirs as they built ours. We owe them a debt: Amnesty and humanitarian aid in this context is not a gift, its reparations.
America must fund USAID, not more “forever wars.” We must work alongside foreign nations—as equals—to meaningfully improve economic and political stability around the world.
For the people who are already here, abiding by our laws and contributing to our communities, this is their home. Hunting and deporting them is not justice. It endangers everyone while diverting billions of dollars away from programs and policies that would benefit everyone.
Together, we can forge a better future—we simply need to take the right steps.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Trump Cadaver’s Latest Iran War
An array of special interests realized that they could make use of this blundering cadaver to ensure their ends were met. These special interests were extremely successful.
Mar 06, 2026
When people from abroad ask me what’s going on with President Donald Trump’s second term, I tell them that he is unlike other US presidents who were strongly influenced by special interests and big money. Instead, he is a charismatic cadaver that big moneyed and special interests have harvested, sometimes complementing each other but other times clashing with a base drive for power at the root of the corpse.
The Trump cadaver appears particularly conflicted in its peace rhetoric and its policies of militarism and war. His longtime campaign speeches of wanting to stop wars, to be the “peace candidate,” and his more recent infantile desire and arm-twisting to receive the Nobel Peace Prize stand in stark contrast to his record as president. During his first term, he amplified Barack Obama’s drone war, dropped a MOAB on Afghanistan in 2017, launched strikes on Syria, and had the top IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani assassinated just after New Year’s in 2020. Minus the assassination, this was well within the norm for the late 20th and early 21st century imperial presidency; suffice to say that first term Trump was not a peace president.
In his second term, Trump became a full-blown authoritarian war hawk while still claiming to be anti-war and an enabler of peace. Before the 2024 election, powerful interests, the military-industrial complex, the Israeli lobby, business interests, and the tech monopolists all made plans to harvest inside Trump should he get elected. This array of special interests realized that they could make use of this blundering cadaver to ensure their ends were met. These special interests were extremely successful.
Project 2025 came into being with the goal of tearing away the social safety net for Americans in its target of the “administrative state.” Trump claimed he had no idea about this project during the campaign, but, once in office, he instituted its policies and hired its authors. This project complemented the extremist right’s anti-immigrant agenda led by Stephen Miller. The results have been ugly: While food stamps have been cut and US citizens and residents from abroad were being gunned down in the streets, the military got half a trillion more dollars annually. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the private paramilitary, received eight times what it has historically at just over $80 billion.
There are no adults in the room to constrain cadaver Trump and his policies of internal and external mass violence, piracy, and war.
Some of the more absurd behavior that we’ve seen over the past year speaks to the forces within the Trump cadaver fighting it out within him. The creation of a Board of Peace for administering Gaza is antithetical to peace and justice. Its main goal is to serve the ultra elite in constructing luxury resorts and likely allow only the most obeisant Gazans to remain as servants to the wealthy. The Trump cadaver endlessly complained about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and then overthrew and kidnapped the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, to essentially loot the country’s oil. Trump deployed ceaseless rhetoric against the neocons but then fulfilling their wet dreams by attacking Iran's nuclear facilities with Israel in 2025 summer. Now, again with Israel, Trump has attacked Iran for no clear reason other than to ensure Israeli regional hegemony and that no country opposes the policies of US empire. In this sense, cadaver Trump has become not just a wannabe dictator of the US, but a wannabe dictator of the world. Clearly, after catering to some anti-war populist campaign rhetoric, the military-industrial complex and pro-Israeli interests took the cadaver by the reins.
As of this writing, there have been 1,230 Iranians killed, including 180 from a girls’ school—a likely war crime. Europe’s most powerful countries, Germany, France, and Great Britain, issued a statement in response to the conflict. Rather than condemning the aggression of an out-of-control empire that no longer chooses to rationalize its mass violence, they condemned the Iranians for responding to the onslaught of Israeli and US attacks. As if Iran should just sit on its knees and get pummeled. It seems as if Trump’s threats of tariffs and taking over Greenland have turned these European leaders into puppets. It calls to mind the “protesters” calling for the shah of Iran to be reinstituted. As if the solution of Iran’s independence and intransigence to the US world order is to have another puppet rule Iran, just like the last one, Reza Pahlavi. It was this last shah who was likely responsible for more deaths of Iranian protesters than recent Iranian government crackdowns.
Today the empire no longer tries to rationalize its wars or pretends to adhere to international law. It is rather an empire gone mad: a strange mix of Viking-era looting and rampage with might-is-right 19th century European colonialism, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio cleverly paid homage to at the Munich Security Conference.
There are no adults in the room to constrain cadaver Trump and his policies of internal and external mass violence, piracy, and war. The leading Democrats in Congress have offered tepid criticism of the latest Iran War only on procedural grounds. That leaves it up to the people, progressives, and burgeoning anti-war sentiment on the right to put an end to these US-generated foreign bloodbaths. And to prevent the continuous rise of inclinations of mass destruction within the Trump cadaver once and for all.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Bombing Iran Means Murdering Children
Mr. President. I am connected to all of humanity, all of life. And so are you. When someone is murdered, part of all of us is murdered.
Mar 05, 2026
“The missile hit during the school’s morning session. In Iran, the school week runs from Saturday to Thursday, so when US and Israeli bombs began falling at around 10:00 am on Saturday, classes were under way. At a point between 10:00 am and 10:45 am, a missile directly hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school, in Minab, southern Iran, demolishing its concrete building and killing dozens of seven to 12-year-old girls.” —The Guardian
War is not an abstraction. It’s living hell... or dying hell. When the United States and Israel (President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) started bombing Iran, I felt the collective human soul begin to vibrate once again, and I began screaming to myself: This is not who we are!
Even though it is.
Our “interests” are what matter, right? Individual human lives are far less important—just read the news. And the larger the death toll, the more abstract those lives get. What isn’t abstract, apparently—what really matters—are the nation’s interests, whatever the hell those are. And interests grow increasingly simplistic as a war goes on, ultimately amounting to winning... not losing.
Every new war reopens an enormous question: How do we evolve beyond this?
I must stand up to this lie and its missiles. I must join the millions—billions?—of others around the globe and stare this lie in its face. We are fully human, not half-human or 10% human or whatever, Mr. President. I am connected to all of humanity, all of life. And so are you. When someone is murdered, part of all of us is murdered.
So I refuse to look at this latest war with abstraction or indifference. As I write, the estimated total of Iranian deaths by US and Israeli bombs is over 1,000 (and the number may well have gone up since I began this sentence). A total of 153 cities across Iran have been damaged by the bombing, according to NBC News, and at this point there have been over 1,000 attacks on the country.
And yes, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “supreme leader,” has been killed. He was a brutal leader. But his murder does not justify all the others, let alone does it justify the possibility of another US “war without end” and the shattering and slaughter of an entire country.
I return to The Guardian words quoted above, which, as far as I’m concerned, get at the true nature of war. They refer to the US-Israeli bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, a coastal city in southeastern Iran on Saturday morning, just as “Operation Epic Fury” began—and just after school started.
The Guardian story continues:
Photographs and verified videos from the site, which the Guardian has not published due to their graphic nature, show children’s bodies lying partly buried under the debris. In one video, a very small child’s severed arm is pulled from the rubble. Colorful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams can be heard in the background.
One distraught man stands in the ruins of the school, waving textbooks and worksheets as rescuers dig by hand through the debris. "These are the schoolbooks of the children who are under these ruins, under this rubble here," he shouts. "You can see the blood of these children on these books. These are civilians, who are not in the military. This was a school and they came to study."
Iranian state media reported that 168 people were killed in the school’s bombing—mostly young girls, but also teachers and staff. And 95 others were injured. And the hellish nature of this story doesn’t necessarily end here. According to research by Al Jazeera, the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school may have been deliberate, not simply an accident, but there’s no definite proof of this. In any case, whether deliberate or “collateral,” the bombing happened. And it was not an abstraction.
When a new war begins, humanity’s cancer continues. As the Cabinet of the Progressive International put it:
These strikes did not begin today. They are an extension of a longer project to redraw the map of West Asia by force. From Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya to Syria, Yemen to Iran, each escalation is a stepping stone in a broader project to suffocate regional sovereignty in the service of US and Israeli interests. Each has left behind shattered states, displaced populations, and the wreckage of societies that dared to assert independence.
Imperialist war does not liberate peoples—it subjugates them.
Every new war reopens an enormous question: How do we evolve beyond this? There will always be conflict—not to mention fear, greed, the complexity of getting along—but I know... and so do many others... that we can scrape and crawl and find our way beyond turning conflict into war. We can and we must. Extinction also looms.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular