There is racism everywhere in the world, but where you are going, there is much more, I told a mulatto grandson who was leaving for Florida, the Sunshine State, claimed by his father. I had a similar conversation with a niece, who noticed that in Atlanta she did not see Black people. Of course, I told her, exaggerating somewhat, they have already killed them all.

Not far from the truth, given that recent history records that of the more than 8,000 Black people hanged and burned in the United States, more than 4,000 were from the so-called Peach State.

That atmosphere of racial purification —to prevent mixing and the spoiling of white blood— has been maintained all along in the misnamed country of democracy, and has emerged with unusual fury since Donald Trump returned to the U.S. presidency.

In the midst of his hysterical campaign of racist lies about immigrants, Trump promised “the largest deportation program in U.S. history.” The tension in the air at the border and in dozens of cities can be cut with scissors.

The day after his new inauguration, Trump ordered the reinforcement of the border with Mexico with tens of thousands of troops. The deployment would take place in full view of the hundreds of people waiting for refuge.

Entire neighborhoods appeared completely deserted in some large cities. In Little Village, Chicago, no one left their homes; thousands did not go to work. The usual landscape of street vendors was replaced by silence on the streets. The neighborhood is almost exclusively inhabited by undocumented immigrants.

“When reports emerged over the weekend that mass deportations could begin Tuesday in the Chicago area, Martin Ramos informed his boss he would take time off work, stockpiled food, and decided his children would not go to soccer practice this week,” reports the Chicago Tribune. Ramos, who “emigrated from Guadalajara, Mexico, without the necessary work permits, spent the first full day of Donald Trump’s second presidency locked in with his family, trying to keep ICE agents from detaining him. He knows an arrest would destroy everything he and his wife have worked for and force his two children into an uncertain future.”

The fear is very real. “We have to do everything we can to keep our children safe,” Ramos told the Tribune. “What will they do if we are deported?”

It remains to be seen how far Trump can actually implement his delusional mass deportation plan. The difficulties are many and varied: social, economic, and institutional. In any case, it would be a social tragedy, an institutional disruption, and an economic catastrophe.

To grasp the dimension of the problem, of the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status, more than four million are Mexican, about two million are Central American, more than 800,000 are from South America, and some 400,000 from the Caribbean. More than half of them have lived in the U.S. for over a decade.

De facto segregation —even if no longer legal— is one of the social bases of political domination in the United States and its governments. Trumpist policy thus takes the Yankee racist tradition and turns it toward a new positioning of the United States in the world.

“The national-imperialist ideology of Reagan’s Republicans was expansive. It optimistically expected that the market openings of the neoliberal era would come accompanied by a natural cultural hegemony of their values and institutions. In that global regime, the United States would always be ahead. Now, with a defensive situation for Yankee imperialism, that same national-imperialist ideology has become something else, something defensive. Economic and cultural ‘openness’ is no longer seen as a vehicle for their own supremacy, but for that of others.”

That this agenda item was central to the campaign is itself a Trump triumph. He gained an advantage across all demographics as someone more decisive and competent than his rival on the issue: a Pew Research Center survey found that for 61% of voters, immigration was a top election issue. Kamala Harris's poor response was to abruptly turn right on the issue —less to compete on unfavorable ground than as a damage-containment policy.

It is not that Democrats have a history of timidity on the matter. Barack Obama was known to immigrant advocacy NGOs as “deporter-in-chief,” especially in his second term, with deportation numbers even exceeding Trump's.

In this context, Republicans see no limit to their rightward shift. Vice President J.D. Vance used to mention that there are “25 million illegal aliens” (a much stronger and more hostile term than “foreigners”) and that the “mass deportation scheme” he defends should start with the round and not-at-all-modest figure of one million expulsions.

The polished right-wing think tanks study in detail the “negative impact on economic growth” of not lowering taxes further for corporations. Yet they do not show similar zeal in trying to measure the catastrophe in terms of employment and economic activity —not to mention social and political impact— that reducing the U.S. population from 334 million to 324 million overnight would entail. Or even to 310 million, should the racist and xenophobic delusion of Trump and Vance be carried to its conclusion.

Furthermore, Vance does not rule out reinstating the family separation policy from the Trump presidency —separating children from their mothers and fathers as a deterrent to border crossing. This enormity is not over: according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as of last March, some 1,400 minors were still waiting to be reunited with their families. Trump also still aspires to eliminate the DACA program, which protects from deportation immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children. Although such attempts were blocked in the courts in the past, much Republican and Trumpist water has passed under the bridge in the Judicial Branch, which is now packed with Trump-appointed judges.

If there is a limit to this madness, it lies not in the political will of Republicans but in the near impossibility of Congress approving funding for such a move. Nevertheless, the Republican Party's written platform, and Trump in his speeches before and after taking office, explicitly promised to implement “the largest deportation program in U.S. history.”

Indeed, “mass deportation of illegal immigrants” was one of the emblematic policies of Trump's campaign and discourse. But here everything is basic questions that no one can answer today. In order of importance: how many immigrants will be deported, starting when, for exactly what reasons, by what means and in what manner, and —depending on all of the above— with what political consequences.

For now, Democratic mayors and governors have made clear that they will resist any deportation attempt by all legal means, that they will not provide the slightest assistance to authorities, and that they will resort to the courts to obstruct the measure —not to mention the obvious (though currently unpredictable) dimension of the wave of resistance or civil disobedience that would be generated.

In short, the main protection immigrants in the U.S. can expect will come from their own mobilization and even from the dysfunctionality of Yankee institutions themselves, which can turn any controversial measure into an impassable quagmire.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff