Apparently, mass deportation raids are to begin Tuesday, January 21, on the day following Donald Trump’s inauguration.[1] The schedule seems rushed to me and I am skeptical that it all can happen that fast. But such skepticism is of little import.
As I have said numerous times before, human beings are human beings. All human beings have human rights, regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, or any other attribute we use to discriminate. Arbitrary lines drawn on maps have no relevance under international human rights law to those rights[2] but are used nonetheless to deprive human beings on the “wrong” side of such lines of the rights and privileges available to those on the “right” side.
This discrimination appears with farm workers who toil in insufferable conditions to harvest our food. It appears with programs and policies like the H-1B program that enable corporations to devalue U.S. workers and hire practically indentured servants from overseas at lower cost.[3]
Qasim Rashid’s call to action largely involves activism within the confines[4] of a constitutional oligarchy (nothing like a ‘democracy’) that, by design, protects the rich from the poor[5] and serves the rest of us poorly if at all. His call fails to address the likelihood that under Trump, this system is likely transitioning to an aconstitutional broligarchy.[6] I have no faith whatsoever either in what this system has been or what it may become and thus perceive Rashid’s political advice as naïve and his legal advice as of a value strictly limited to the short term—none of us will have constitutional rights for long as fascism takes hold.
My advice is to hide. Encrypt your communications.[7] Hide your unauthorized migrant neighbors. Be circumspect in public communications on social media. For now, we must be single-minded on a single goal: survival.
[1] Qasim Rashid, “Trump's Mass Anti-Immigrant Raids to Begin,” Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid, January 19, 2025, https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/trumps-mass-anti-immigrant-raids
[2] Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, “What are human rights?” n.d., https://www.ohchr.org/en/what-are-human-rights
[3] Bernie Sanders, “H1-B visas hurt one type of worker and exploit another. This mess must be fixed,” January 8, 2025, https://www.sanders.senate.gov/op-eds/h1-b-visas-hurt-one-type-of-worker-and-exploit-another-this-mess-must-be-fixed/
[4] Qasim Rashid, “Trump's Mass Anti-Immigrant Raids to Begin,” Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid, January 19, 2025, https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/trumps-mass-anti-immigrant-raids
[5] James Madison, "Federalist No. 10," in The Federalist Papers, ed. Garry Wills (1982; repr., New York: Bantam, 2003).
[6] Gil Duran, “How the 'Broligarchs' plan to use Trump,” Nerd Reich, November 25, 2024, https://www.thenerdreich.com/how-thebroligarchs-plan-to-use-trump/; Brooke Harrington, “What the Broligarchs Want From Trump,” Atlantic, November 24, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/broligarchy-elon-musk-trump/680788/; Lynn Parramore, “How to Disguise Racism and Oligarchy: Use Economics,” Evonomics, n.d., https://evonomics.com/how-to-disguise-racism-and-oligarchy-use-the-language-of-economics/
[7] David Benfell, “Hide. Now,” Not Housebroken, January 4, 2025, https://www.disunitedstates.org/p/hide-now