The United States has long been a beacon of liberty for people around the world. As a republic built on the premise that all men are created equal, with a constitution that constrains government power in defense of the individual, it is clear America is compromising its founding principles.
How the Trump administration is responding to last week’s shooting in Washington, D.C. is reflective of this.
In the aftermath of the shooting of two National Guardsmen, one fatally, the Trump administration jumped at the chance to inflict collective punishment on people from all over the world who wish to seek the American Dream legally or seek asylum here.
The accused gunman, an Afghan national who received asylum from the Trump administration this year, reportedly suffered from what appears to be mental health issues. According to the BBC, the accused gunman “spent weeks at a time alone in a dark room and suffered ‘manic episodes.’”
The picture that’s emerging is an all around tragedy. An Afghan asylum seeker who aided American forces in Afghanistan mentally struggling after fleeing his country and resettling in America before inexplicably shooting two people is a terrible story.
Rather than let the American justice system handle matters from here, the Trump administration has chosen to respond to this tragedy by weaponizing the suspected shooter’s background to punish immigrants and asylum seekers.
President Donald Trump, for example, has called for a “permanent pause” on migration from “Third World” countries. He also ordered a halt to asylum claims.
Meanwhile, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem unleashed a xenophobic screed through her official account on X, “I just met with the President. I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
This sort of absurd rhetoric panders to the worst elements of the xenophobic right while somehow pretending to be concerned with freedom and America’s founding principles.
This shouldn’t be complicated.
In America, individuals should be held accountable for their actions. Collective punishment of immigrants and asylum seekers is self-evidently wrong.
In America, we should welcome those who wish to legally travel here and immigrate here who stand on their own merits as individuals. Depriving people of that opportunity solely because of where they’re from is self-evidently wrong.
And in America, we should have the sense to put into positions of power people who know better than to make their darkest thoughts national policy. That should be self-evident.