Is Trump CAUSING the immigration crisis?

During the "caravan" pseudo-crisis of 2018, right-wing propagandists tried to convince us that George Soros had paid immigrants to come to this country. An absurd theory.

To accomplish all of the evils attributed to him, Soros would have to be richer than Putin and all of his oligarchs put together. In the rightist imagination, Soros can accomplish innumerable evils without leaving any documentary evidence; he can command obedience and omerta from thousands of co-conspirators without a single blown whistle or deathbed confession.

Millions of Americans take this guff for gospel. Depressing, innit?

The "Soros funded the caravan" conspiracy theory was absurd even by Trumpist standards. Why on earth would Soros do such a thing at that time? The caravan aided the Republicans during a crucial election season. Why would Soros give the GOP an issue to run on?

Simple political logic -- reasoning from effects back to causes -- suggests that, if a "caravan conspiracy" did exist, it must have been initiated by right-wing interests. Even Josh Marshall flirted with this idea in a column published at the time. (He is usually too conventional to pursue such notions very far, but he does have his moments.) Although Marshall didn't offer evidence, he was brave enough to ask what should have been an obvious question: "Why now?" Why did the caravan arise at the precise time when it could do the most good for the GOP?

We have been repeatedly told that refugee caravans sprang from the wretched conditions in certain Central American states. The 2018 election is over and the 2020 contest has begun; once again, it is time for us to reason from effects to causes. 

Isn't Trump's reelection bid served by this crisis? Is it not in Trump's interest to make matters worse in that part of the world?

Here, I think, is the real explanation for the DHS purge and the forced resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visited Honduras and announced what she called a historic regional compact to address the root causes of migration with the three countries known as the Northern Triangle, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

But, over the weekend, the State Department announced it would cut all foreign assistance to those three countries. Today, Congress gave the State Department a deadline to provide details of the cuts.

Whatever you may think of Nielsen's hardline tactics at the border, she was undoubtedly sincere in her efforts to ameliorate the root causes of the refugee crisis. She did not understand that Trump's political calculations require worsening misery on that region. He needs caravans. When he is comfortably re-elected (as I predict he will be), he may then address the root causes if he cares to, although I doubt that he will. If he does make the effort, and if those efforts prove successful, even liberals will forget and forgive.

Two weeks ago, David Graham made a similar argument in The Atlantic: The Worse Things Are, the Better They Are for Trump

Many of Trump’s decisions on border issues seem designed not to solve any problem. This includes Trump’s standing threat to close the border with Mexico; his decision to end DACA, a program that he has said achieves goals he favors; and most prominently, his decision to separate unauthorized immigrant families arriving at the border. None of these do anything to solve or reduce what Trump has called a crisis at the border. In fact, they are likely to only worsen the crisis. Separations, for example, became a costly and distracting circus, taking up already short space in detention centers and then necessitating a major effort to reunite families and restore the status quo ante when courts predictably rejected the policy.

Along similar lines, it’s more politically useful for Trump to be in a lengthy fight about building a border wall than it is to have actually built it. If and when the wall is built, it will become clear that it isn’t a panacea for immigration, but in the meantime, it’s a useful political wedge. The more migrants are coming toward the United States, the more Trump can warn of an “invasion” and inflame nativist fears that he thinks will help him win reelection. Trump isn’t really interested in solving immigration. A permanent crisis is more useful to him.

From today's WP:

From the day Trump announced his plans to run for president, immigration has been his political go-to issue. It is the most-used weapon in the president’s rhetorical arsenal and will likely be in the forefront of the 2020 campaign. Whenever he needs to rally his supporters, whenever he needs a diversion from other problems, he has turned back to immigration.

How we got here. Central America was ruined, in large measure, by the United States government. Over the course of 65 years, the CIA and Special Forces advisers have fought a covert war against "Marxism," broadly defined as any force which endangers the aristocracy's hold on power.

Our original sin, the crime from which so many other evils sprang, was the Guatemalan coup of 1954. A democratically-elected government headed by Jacobo Arbenz -- a reformer, not a communist -- was toppled by American covert operators using psychological warfare tactics. (Their psy-war mentor was a strange and remarkable figure named Paul Linebarger, one of Baltimore's more noteworthy citizens; I've spoken about him in previous posts.) Ever since that operation -- code-named PBSUCCESS -- Americans have kept a succession of thugs in power in that country.

As any sensible person might have predicted, the crushing of an anti-Marxist reform movement in Guatemala caused the popularity of Marxism to skyrocket throughout the region. In particular, Che Guevara decided that liberal democracy was hopeless. He wasn't the only one.

In the late 1970s, neighboring El Savador was a nation long ruled by a handful of corrupt families who functioned as a kind of collective tyranny. A long-overdue rebellion, supported by both the Marxist left and some elements of the Catholic church, threatened the oligarchs. The Reagan administration ruthlessly worked with the fascist Salvadoran right to crush the revolution.

The oligarchs ruling Honduras could not have stayed in power without the CIA, which has maintained a controlling interest in that nation's affairs. CIA influence lingered long after the collapse of the USSR and thus cannot be rationalized by invoking the Marxist bogeyman. The repression has been incredibly brutal. William Blum argues that Hillary Clinton helped to initiate the current crisis when she sanctioned the overthrow of another reformer:

The particularly severe increase in recent years in Honduran migration to the US is a direct result of the overthrow of Zelaya, whose crime was things like raising the minimum wage, giving subsidies to small farmers, and instituting free education. It is a tale told many times in Latin America: The downtrodden masses finally put into power a leader committed to reversing the status quo, determined to try to put an end to two centuries of oppression … and before long the military overthrows the democratically-elected government, while the United States – if not the mastermind behind the coup – does nothing to prevent it or to punish the coup regime, as only the United States can punish; meanwhile Washington officials pretend to be very upset over this “affront to democracy” while giving major support to the coup regime. The resulting return to poverty is accompanied by government and right-wing violence against those who question the new status quo, giving further incentive to escape the country.

Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are collectively known as the Northern Triangle of Central America. This Medium article offers a good overview:

For decades, U.S. policies of military intervention and economic neoliberalism have undermined democracy and stability in the region, creating vacuums of power in which drug cartels and paramilitary alliances have risen.

Gangs. Repressive regimes are a large part of the problem, but there are other factors. At another time, I may discuss the environmental problems besetting the region. For now, I want to concentrate on gangs.

Gang violence has run rampant throughout the Northern Triangle, particularly El Salvador. Most Americans still don't understand that the warring gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18 (known in my former hometown as the 18th Street Gang) were exported from the United States to Central America.

The origins of these two gangs began in Los Angeles. During the civil war in Central America during the 1980s, over a million people had fled to the US to escape the violence. Many went to Los Angeles...

Unable to fit in the social milieu, the poor and marginalised illegal immigrant youth joined the criminal gangs in LA. The Ronald Reagan administration denied refugee status to these Central American immigrants, who were then forced into clandestine lives. During the nineties, US authorities cracked down on the gangs and deported thousands to Central America. But many of the deported, who were born or brought up in US, found it difficult to adjust in Central America and continued with their LA gang culture. They regrouped themselves locally with guns smuggled from the US and scaled up their crimes, taking advantage of the weak law enforcement and justice system of these countries.

The gangs evolved a culture of tattoos, brutal rites of initiation, extortion, crime and drug trafficking. It is worth noting that both the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs are still active in many states of the US.

Also see here:

Under the Clinton administration, federal agents tried to empty the prison by deporting undocumented gang members back to El Salvador, where civil war had left the country with little rule of law.

Violence in El Salvador escalated to near-civil war rates, and within a generation the children of those who’d fled war, and who were then were deported, had destabilized the country so thoroughly that it fueled another mass migration.

Now let's go here:

Increased deportations of Salvadoran gang members during the Trump administration will likely have the effect of further swelling gang membership numbers in El Salvador, which will in turn lead to more migration as Salvadorans flee gang extortion rackets and violence.

Gangs are, in short, a made-in-America problem. Not long ago, most Guatemalans were simple, religious peasant farmers; they did not form criminal associations until their young received an education in brutality from California's Mexican gangs, and from the Crips and the Bloods.

(It is worth noting that the Crips arose after the American power structure had decimated black political movements. Power tolerates criminality, not rebellion.)

Arguably, gangs are this country's most significant export.

In a recent poll, 42 percent of El Salvadorans said that gangs run the country, while only 12 percent said that the government runs the show.

MS-13 is a dominant force in Salvadoran affairs. Outside the U.S., MS-13’s largest presence is in Central America, particularly in the northern triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

MS-13 has become a powerful force, capable of coercing weak Central American governments. For example, in 2012, the Salvadoran government was forced to sign a truce with MS-13 in an effort to reduce skyrocketing homicide rates. Although the truce did reduce homicides, the agreement was widely unpopular. Extortion and associated criminal activity continued at high rates with almost no resistance from the government.

When current President Salvador Sánchez Cerén reversed the 2012 truce and implemented a “mano dura,” or iron-first policy, against MS-13 in 2014, the gang retaliated by dumping bodies on the streets. The homicide rate skyrocketed and in 2015, El Salvador had the highest homicide rate in the world.

MS-13 largely relies on extortion as its largest source of income, but has also been known to engage in drug and human trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, and theft.

Here's more.

In neighbourhoods throughout the capital, San Salvador, residents heading to work or school pass through an informal checkpoint where a bandera – the term the gangs use for their young lookouts and errand runners – asks everyone for a dollar. At many of the roadblocks, the bandera is barely eight years old. But most people fork over the money. Anyone who doesn’t pay up might come to regret it later.

Extortion at places of business is the bigger problem. At least once a week, older gang members, or mareros, come by every shop and vendor’s stall in the neighbourhood market to collect the renta, or protection money, from merchants who can’t afford their own security guards. Again, most shopkeepers pay. To defy the gangs is to court death.

Many Salvadorans stay away from public places and even avoid walking down the street. The affluent generally stay inside gated compounds. After sunset, many streets in San Salvador are deserted. The night is for the maras, which do most of their killing then. And it’s for the army and police, who wait until after dark to conduct their house-by-house searches for criminal suspects. Police officers always wear a gorro navarone, or face-covering balaclava, scared that gang members will come after them and their families.

America and the gangs. Most would scoff at the suggestion that American interests sanctioned the rise of the gangs in Central America. I ask those scoffers to consider a thought experiment.

Suppose MS-13 and Barrio 18 advocated land reform. Suppose they targeted the wealthy instead of preying on working people and shopkeepers. Suppose a leader came out of this demimonde -- an ambitious, well-read leader who dared to utter forbidden thoughts: "You know, Das Kapital has some interesting ideas, once you get past the boring stuff in the beginning."

Suppose, in short, that MS-13 planted one foot in the left. What then?

Admit it. You know the answer.

If MS-13 were that kind of organization, it never would have been allowed to attain the kind of power it now wields. The beast would have been strangled in adolescence. The gangs would have met with a fate similar to that meted out to the left-wing rebellions of the 1970s and 80s. Northern Triangle military officers would have used torture tactics taught at Fort Benning. "Advisers" from our intelligence agencies and Special Forces would have flooded the area.

The leftist uprising that began 40 years ago had genuine popular support and approval from substantial sector of the Church. Yet the rebels were crushed. The gangs, despised by all, thrive.

We must therefore presume that the gangs were and are allowed to thrive. They control the region with America's blessing. If "blessing" is too strong a word for you, consider a phrase like "tactical disinterest." From Wikipedia's entry on MS-13:

The gang in particular has become a core component to Republican Party political messaging on immigration policy in the United States, beginning in the 2010s.

If MS-13 did not exist, it would be necessary for the American right to invent it.