‘Trump isn’t targeting gangs … he’s targeting immigrants’: Donald Trump’s Operation Aurora could just be deportation in disguise
Donald Trump sank to new lows at a rally in Aurora, Colorado this week, telling his audience that he would be rolling out “Operation Aurora” to save the city from the “war zone” he claims migrants have caused it to become.
Despite its military-style branding, Operation Aurora isn’t a well-thought-out crime-prevention strategy, but rather a scare tactic he intends to use to rile up his base against immigrants. And immigrants will suffer for it.
What is Operation Aurora?
According to Trump, Operation Aurora is a proposed program that is meant to target “every illegal migrant criminal network operating on American soil,” and it may leverage the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to do so. What is the Alien Enemies Act? It’s a relatively unchanged piece of 18th-century legislation that allows the president to detain and deport non-citizens during wartime or a presidentially declared “invasion” by a foreign nation. This may explain the military-style branding behind “Operation Aurora,” along with Trump’s use of the term “war zone,” as Trump is attempting to mask his draconian immigration policy plans as some sort of military strategy to target migrants.
Trump’s Operation Aurora comments come on the heels of an incident of violence in a Denver neighborhood. Video captured at an apartment complex in downtown Denver shows a group of armed men knocking on doors, leading some to claim that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over the area. Despite these claims, police deny that Tren de Aragua has a substantial presence in Denver.
Aurora, Colorado has become home to a large population of Venezuelan immigrants in recent years, but the influx of migrants has not caused an increase in violent crime. In fact, the state’s crime levels are following a nationwide downward trend. Despite these statistics, Donald Trump described Colorado’s cities as being “overrun by Venezuelan gangs.”
X users are calling Trump’s Operation Aurora plans a “false flag operation” to sow fear and division among the populace, tricking people into believing that Trump will save them from a problem that does not exist.
Other users fear that Operation Aurora is an effort to target immigrants as a whole, and subject migrant communities to mass deportation nationwide.
Even if Operation Aurora never comes to fruition (and let’s be real, it was likely never intended to) couching the debate around immigration in military terms will have disastrous effects on U.S. immigrant populations. A Trump-led America is an America ruled by fear, and migrants will suffer the most.
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