Mass deportations: lessons from Minnesota

My pet peeve is the way the British right is obsessed the American politics and continually transposes American narratives on to British politics - routinely failing to understand that Britain is a very different country. We also see this with Reform who are ever keen to emulate American electoral methods, expecting the same results.

Almost as a point of principle now, I tend to ignore American politics. I couldn’t be less interested in big beast American podcasters, and when my own country is in such a parlous state, I don’t think any of us are in a position to be lecturing American voters on what they should be doing.

Still, though, there are times when events in America can serve as an early warning. I’ve been following ICE deportations with great interest - on the presumption that remigration in some form is inevitable in Britain and Europe.

On this issue I ruffled a few feathers last year by saying mass deportations are a non-starter, and this week it looks like ICE is bumping into the very problems I’ve talked about. The gist of it is that a protestor has come a cropper attempting to ram an ICE officer, and the left are attempting to turn it into a George Floyd moment.

The Minnesota governor, Tim Waltz, is attempting to push it into civil war territory and threatening to deploy the National guard against ICE. Disgracefully, many media outlets are also getting in on the act, promoting misleading versions of what actually happened.

I very much doubt civil war is on the cards. This doesn’t appear to have quite the same hysterical momentum as the George Floyd furore (as much a lockdown phenomenon as anything else), but the left are more than happy to risk such an outcome. The goal is to spark protests on a scale that forces Trump to either double down or back off. So far as they’re concerned, it’s a win-win either way. They hope that if Trump doubles down they’ll be able to proliferate footage of ICE officers brutalising protestors and leverage public sympathy.

As to whether it will work remains to be seen. It seems unlikely. In all probability the American public have had enough of this, particularly on the back of the Somali daycare scandal. The American left’s power to distort the narrative is at its lowest ebb. All the same, the left will fight tooth and nail to keep the Somalian migrants they need to gerrymander elections. This is where the Trump administration will need to be decisive. As one tweeter notes:

Every day that the Insurrection Act isn’t invoked, every day there aren’t mass arrests against Leftist terrorists promoting political assassinations and murder, is one day closer to this boiling over into something none of us are ready for.

The Left is learning through inaction on the part of Federal law enforcement that there will be no consequences for the terrorism they’re now publicly promoting. And that’s only emboldening them further.

This is why these people believe they can inject themselves in any situation and intervene against Federal law enforcement without facing any pushback whatsoever.

They don’t think the law applies to them because they’re the good guys who are on the right side of history. They see themselves as fictional rebels fighting a fascist empire, and as long as they pay no price for they’re actions, they’re going to continue to challenge Federal law enforcement on the ground because they’re believe they can act with impunity.

You get more of what you incentivize. At a certain point, there are no more memes to post or jokes to make about “those whacky liberals”. Decisive action is necessary.

The administration cannot continue to post edgy tweets from the DHS X account without employing the necessary force to demonstrate that they have the resources and will to continue enforcing the mass deportations agenda that Trump was elected to implement.

This has direct relevance to the British debate. I was thinking along these lines a year ago when I tried to envisage what a similar programme would look like in Britain. I looked at the Harehills riots and the Kenmure Street incident in Glasgow where protestors blocked an immigration enforcement operation. (Same playbook). I then got to wondering what that looks like when immigration enforcement turn up to Savile Town in Dewsbury. It could very easily trigger a full blown revolt among Pakistani tribes - leading to nationwide unrest. British leftist protestors will be an irrelevance.

Put simply, if you're going to pull the trigger on that, you've basically got to be prepared to put down an uprising. I don't see any British government having the political capital or the gumption to pull it off. You can just imagine the supine response of the British police. Certainly, it could not be done by local police forces. It would require a national immigration enforcement agency similar to ICE with armed police back up. They could very rapidly find themselves cornered and outnumbered - with left wing protests running interference. What you then have is a government unable to assert its own authority.

Essentially, no British government is able to pull the pin on mass deportations without a thumping majority and an unmistakable public mandate, which certainly won’t be the case for any Tory/Reform government in the near future. I don’t see any future British prime minster being confident enough in their own authority to pull it off, especially while the BBC still has disproportionate influence over the national conversation.

As with many things a future right wing government wants to do (such as leaving the ECHR), the ground will have to be prepared during its first term. The administration will have to defund the BBC and the NGO complex, while beefing up immigration enforcement. Going in straight off the bat will see any British government forced into retreat.

Timing, I think, also has some bearing on it. Trump has a much stronger mandate to act on the back of the Somali daycare scandal, itself a culmination of a very deliberate Democrat policy to gerrymander elections in a relatively short time. This does not transpose into British politics, where any remigration initiative would be aimed at those granted indefinite leave to remain. Many will see it as unfair to deport at scale those who were essentially invited here to fill labour shortages.

While remigration advocates point to the relative successes of ICE, again we see that Britain is not directly comparable. As much as anything, there is a certain liberal vanity to the British psyche which prides itself on its superiority to American brashness. A good chunk of the British left and right, out of pure narcissistic contrarianism, will oppose emulating America. Moreover, we should not get ahead of ourselves. This is a long game that Trump may yet lose. I will continue to watch with great interest.