Even Bruce Springsteen has set it to music.
A few months ago he wrote Streets of Minneapolis, denouncing to the world the murder of two citizens by thugs from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Customs and Border Protection. As he wrote it, one name was burned into his mind as among those directly to blame for the innocent blood spilt: Stephen Miller. He is Trump’s close aide and, as of yesterday, the new White House chief of staff.
The song tells of Trump’s federal heavies beating Alex Pretti about the face and chest, of the gunshots that followed, and of Pretti lying dead in the snow. It scoffs at the official claim of self-defence and tells listeners to trust their own eyes. And it pits ordinary people, armed with nothing but whistles and mobile phones, against the filthy lies of Miller and Noem.
Kristi Noem was US Homeland Security Secretary when Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered. After the uproar over her role, over the ICE and CBP raids on innocent people, the arrests, the abuse and the two murders, Trump replaced her.
It is no secret in America that Stephen Miller, in Trump’s first term and in this one, has been the mastermind who conceived a rabid immigration policy and rammed it through with batons and guns. Yet he was not pushed aside after January’s murders, which brought furious crowds onto the streets for days on end.
Sidelined? Not a bit of it. On Friday, Trump announced he was appointing him to the post. Yesterday he clocked in. He is now the president’s closest and most powerful aide, with organisational, advisory and purely political duties.
Anyone who thinks last Tuesday’s drubbing will make the old rhino go soft had better think again. A fanatical, merciless conservative, accused of orchestrating a brutal and inhumane campaign of arrests, abuse and deportations, children included, is being promoted and handed control of the White House. When that happens, there is not the faintest reason to hope Trump will show a more human face in the final two years of his rule.
Quite the opposite. As Reuters reported yesterday, citing officials, the Trump administration is expected to press on with its aggressive immigration crackdown and to ramp up the culture wars.
And yet Trump, speaking to CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, admitted that his administration’s deportation policy had been too harsh. It was a policy that, in the end, drove a significant share of Republicans to vote Democrat. “I think it was too tough,” he told journalist Ross Douthat. Pressed further, Trump said: “I think it might be too tough, yeah.” Elsewhere in the interview, he said that a large part of American society believes people who work in hotels, in landscaping or in other jobs, and who sometimes pay taxes, should be allowed to stay in the country.
Instead of letting them stay and become citizens, Miller and the aforementioned Kristi Noem ordered ICE to multiply its arrests of foreign nationals. Which is exactly what it did. According to reports, arrests in 2025 climbed to 3,000 a day, up from an average of 1,000 before the pair set about restoring… order. The two also led the charge to deport large numbers of migrants who were already living and working in the US, with no record of violence or crime.
Burnt fingers, it seems, have taught Trump nothing. The coming months will show whether Republicans will band together to (lawfully) remove him, or whether they will let him lead them to another crushing defeat in two years’ time. And lead millions of poor people with them, trapped in misery and persecution.
