Around this time 10 years ago, when Florida was still seen as a competitive battleground state, Donald Trump campaigned in Miami and spent some time at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, stressing the “common values” he shared with Haitian Americans.
“Whether you vote for me or not,” the candidate said, “I really want to be your biggest champion.”
In the Republican president’s first term, he left little doubt that he hadn’t mean a word of it, and in his second term, Trump has made matters vastly worse. Just in recent months, he ended humanitarian safeguards under the Temporary Protected Status program, subjecting Haitians — many of whom have been working legally in the United States, paying taxes and contributing to their communities — to immediate deportation.
Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, described this as “a huge, huge mistake” that was not at all in the United States’ interest. The White House didn’t care.
Then last week, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security published an item to social media, bragging about the termination of TPS for Haitians via a 50-second video that purportedly showed Haitians being forced onto a deportation plane. The video showed Black people, literally in chains for unexplained reasons, with on-screen text reading “TEMPORARY MEANT TEMPORARY.”
One day later, The Washington Post reported:
White South Africans who come to the United States as refugees could get up to $4,500 per person in initial federal support beginning Oct. 1, nearly double the current amount, four people familiar with the change in policy told The Washington Post.
The assistance — up from about $2,400 — would be the highest level to date, one of the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information.
The White House’s great affection for white people from South Africa has been well-documented, but the increased cash rewards — for all intents and purposes, welfare payments to white foreigners the president likes — are new, and they came to the public’s attention just one day after the Trump administration thought it would be a good idea to release that video of chained Black people being forced out of the country.
Administration officials have argued over the past year that welcoming white South Africans as refugees is the only responsible course because they face potential violence in their home country. What administration officials have failed entirely to grapple with is that (a) other countries where people face persecution have found that Team Trump has effectively closed the door to any refugee (who isn’t an Afrikaner); and (b) conditions in Haiti are so violent and brutal that the U.S. has issued a “Level 4: Do not travel” advisory for the country.
The White House’s policy has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, Trump’s 2016 “biggest champion” assurances notwithstanding.
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