'Vermin'—Justifying Mass Deportation

The dehumanization of undocumented immigrants

Licensed via Adobe Stock Photo

As Donald Trump’s deportation machine spools up, whatever fates befall undocumented immigrants prove to be of little interest to millions of Americans. In fact, the more ghoulish among them, a not insignificant contingent, express sadistic delight in the misery of immigrants.

Exhibit A: The honorable Mr. Erickson, a.k.a. some guy on the internet, commenting on a Daily Beast Facebook post from yesterday about recent deportations:

I know, just some guy on the internet, but they are legion. Erickson advertises his lack of empathy with glee, a quality that Gustave Mark Gilbert, known as the “Nuremberg psychologist,” posited was a hallmark of evil. During the course of his interviews with the Nazi high command, Gilbert sought to ascertain the nature of evil. This is what he found:

“…a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

The absence of empathy is alive and well in the United States, as evidenced by Erickson and many, many others. No horror can be visited upon undocumented immigrants too ghastly to strain its rationalization. Rape, families torn apart, migrants drowned, starved, or shot in the borderlands, or migrants detained under brutal conditions. The response is always the same: “Well, they’re criminals.” Here’s a colorful example of this position on Twitter:

Lots to unpack in this hate-filled rant. Firstly, note the tonal disconnect between his tweet and his bio. Also, fact check (not that it would sway someone like this): undocumented immigrants do pay taxes, even federal taxes, in a number of ways, including via an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) or through a business, such an LLC. This country may not want you here, but they’re happy to take your money all the same. That undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes is one of the biggest immigrant myths out there.

Perhaps most telling is his use of the word “vermin,” a word employed by autocrats during the 20th century, including Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, to dehumanize populations and political opponents. Last year, Trump resurrected that ignominious tradition.

Of course, Trump’s supporters downplayed it. The rest of us were making a mountain out of a molehill. It was just rhetoric. But we mustn’t underestimate rhetoric. It’s always the first stage of dehumanization, and it lays the groundwork for the atrocities that follow. To wit: “savages” was used to describe Native Americans in order to rationalize the theft of their land and their genocide, while Untermenschen, or subhumans, a Nazi word to describe Slavic people and Jewish people, was used to justify Lebensraum and the Final Solution. Because it’s not genocide if they’re not human, right?

I’m reminded of a Nathaniel Hawthorne quote:

“Words—so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”

Words can inspire, and they can enrage; they can paralyze, and they can galvanize; they can bring us together, and they can tear us apart.

Dehumanizing language leveled at undocumented immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, which has skyrocketed in the Trump era, hinges on the criminality of immigrants. There’s just one catch: the vast majority of undocumented immigrants aren’t hardened criminals.

As I wrote in my last piece, there are a million different ways to immigrate to the U.S. There isn’t one “right way.” Often, immigrants are here legally for years before their protection lapses, by which point they’ve laid down roots. Most undocumented immigrants are terrified of running afoul of any law, as even minor transgressions may upend their lives.

---

It’s reasonable to want strong borders and a robust immigration policy, but it’s unreasonable, nay, it is evil, using GM Gilbert’s definition of evil, to not care about the welfare or humane treatment of migrants at the border and undocumented immigrants in this country. They’re not vermin. They’re not “poisoning the blood” of our country. They’re human beings, for Christ’s sake.

Unfortunately, mass deportation precludes humane treatment, however, as

Jenn Budd

, a former senior patrol agent, now an immigration activist, pointed out in a recent Substack note:

“There is no such thing as a humane mass deportation. There will be separations, assaults, sexual assaults, child molestation & deaths that this administration, Border Patrol, ICE & CBP will attempt to hide.”

But if they’re all criminals, rapists, and murderers—and all undocumented immigrants are criminals, according to Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary—we can justify their pain. We can rationalize their suffering. Because it’s not torture if they’re criminals, right?

---

Visit PabloAndreu.com for more of my writing.