How would Jews fleeing Europe have fared under Trump’s anti-immigration policies?

Editor’s note: It should be noted that there are hundreds of US citizens that have been not only detained but abused, beaten, and treated poorly – not in accordance with national or international laws and customs.  In addition, like the 18 year old girl from Staten Island who was released after a month of the terror of not knowing what was going to happen, many, many immigrants that have been detained were following the legal process for obtaining permanent residency under refugee and other relevant immigration laws. Rather than pursuing only violent criminals, anyone who is accused of entering the country illegally is fair game – and can even be deported to an El Salvadoran torture prison without any trial or due process.  For example, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant under orders to remain in America by a judge, was sent to that gulag and finally released due to lack of evidence thus far connecting him to any crime, as well as his claim of malicious prosecution and reasonable fear of new unjust detainment. However, what happened to the nearly 700 other men who were detained at the same prison and had no one to fight for them? No one knows, as they’ve disappeared and no information about them is available.  

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

Donald Trump’s vision of foreigners worthy of emigrating to the United States appears to boil down to this: white, Nordic, Christian, politically conservative, not obese, and not a potential drain on public services. It’s a fantasy that’s reminiscent of Nazi values, and one that is being rejected by many Americans.

Trump’s Thanksgiving Day responses to the Washington, D.C. shooting of two National Guard members — one of whom has died — are among the most overtly racist statements he has ever made in public. Trump said he would stop migration from “all Third World Countries” and deport foreign nationals who are “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

Trump has faced accusations of racism since he was a young real estate developer working with his father. During his first term as president, Trump said America should welcome more immigrants from places like Norway, rather than from Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations — which he dismissed as ‘shithole countries.” Trump, during his second term, has been enacting something like a purity code: Hispanics guilty of nothing more than being in the country illegally get deported; right-wing extremists who tried to carry out a coup in his name get pardons.

About 66,000 migrants are currently locked up under Trump’s immigration crackdown — the largest detention population in U.S. history. Many have no criminal record. Social media is flooded daily with videos of ICE agents smashing car windows, masked men in battle gear dragging immigrants from vehicles, and children left crying as parents are hauled away in handcuffs. Each outrage carries the same message: You are not wanted here.

More than 250 Venezuelan migrants were sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, branded by critics as a ‘black hole of humanity.”

Other migrants have been spirited away to South Sudan and countries where they had never set foot — their destinies left unknown.

The Trump administration’s unequal treatment of white South Africans and Palestinian survivors of Gaza is an infuriating display of heartlessness and racism. Even though Afrikaners were the architects and beneficiaries of apartheid’s cruelty, they have been promised the lion’s share of America’s drastically reduced refugee slots. Meanwhile, Gazan Palestinians — whose homes have been destroyed, whose loved ones have been killed by the tens of thousands, and who have endured famine for months — are excluded entirely. In Trump’s America, whiteness and ideological alignment matter more than human suffering.

I can’t help but think of the plight of refugees in postwar Europe after Nazi Germany’s defeat. Up to 60 million people were uprooted across the continent. Some 11 million refugees crowded into Allied‑run displaced persons camps, including hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma, and other survivors of Nazi camps.

Most of these souls would not pass muster in Trump’s America. His new guidance to embassies and consulates instructs visa officers to screen out applicants who are overweight, elderly, or suffering from chronic conditions — diabetes, heart disease, depression.  Applicants must prove financial self‑sufficiency, English proficiency, and the ability to work without reliance on public benefits. Yet multitudes of Europe’s postwar refugees were sick, stripped of education, and dependent on government support just to survive. Compassion has no place in Trump’s transactional brain; these are not the kind of people he would deem worthy of America’s embrace.

What Trump apparently did not see coming was the backlash against his terror campaign against foreigners. In towns and cities across the country, neighbors have rallied as immigrant friends, business owners, and longtime contributors to their communities were hunted down and disappeared. Vigils, marches, and local resolutions have sprung up, with ordinary citizens insisting that their communities will not be defined by terror.

Charlotte offers one example: when ICE launched Operation Charlotte’s Web in November, agents stormed immigrant neighborhoods and even a church, prompting pastors to prepare sanctuaries and residents to organize vigils and rapid‑response patrols.  In St. Paul, Minn., rapid‑response networks sprang up to protect immigrant families, alerting neighbors when ICE vans appeared and mobilizing lawyers to defend detainees. During Trump’s first major sweep, in Los Angeles, mass protests turned the city into a showcase of resistance rather than submission.

Community members have demonstrated an incredible fearlessness in their efforts to protect immigrants from federal agents — shouting at them to identify themselves, to show a warrant, and that they’re not welcome in the neighborhood. Sometimes the agents have retreated, getting back into their van or SUV without making an arrest.

ICE agents’ attempts to arrest a 16‑year‑old high school student in Rhode Island this month offers a stirring example of community compassion in action. The teen, interning for Superior Court Judge Joseph J. McBurney in Providence, was misidentified by agents who surrounded the judge’s car and threatened to smash the windows. McBurney stood firm, insisting they had the wrong person. Only after confirming his words did the agents back down, and the boy was freed.

In several communities, high school students, peers and teachers have stepped in to defend migrant classmates against ICE and Border Patrol agents prowling neighborhoods, often accused of racial profiling based on skin color or accents.

In Oregon, nearly 300 students walked out of McMinnville High School to protest the ICE arrest of a classmate during lunch break and demanded school administrators create protocols to alert migrant students whenever ICE agents are spotted nearby.

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“Honestly, after what happened to that kid, the 17-year-old, I don’t feel safe going to school,” fellow  student Alexis Hernandez Flores told KOIN 6 News.

As depressing and alarming as the past several months have been — as Trump has brought the United States to the abyss of autocracy — I have found reason for hope in ordinary citizens’ bold actions to protect foreigners in their midst from illegal and racist roundups. From Chicago to Charlotte, from Los Angeles to Providence, neighbors, churches, and even judges have refused to be silent. Their defiance recalls what was missing in Nazi Germany: a public willing to stand up, to insist that fear and violence will not define their communities.

If Trump sends federal agents into neighborhoods to arrest and deport foreign nationals who are deemed “non-compatible with Western Civilization,” as he has threatened, the backlash will surely become louder, and the resistance against him stronger.

This story was originally published on the Forward.

Banner Image: Refugee children. Image Credit – ‪Salah Darwish