A year-and-a-half into Donald Trump’s presidency, it’s become quite clear that the anti-immigrant animus he exhibited on the campaign trail, and which compelled so much enthusiasm from white voters of all income levels, is also the guiding philosophy of his presidency. Kicking out or detaining as many immigrants as possible, or at least the ones perceived as nonwhite, has arguably been the top priority of the Trump White House. That has resulted in escalated deportation, the now-notorious family separation policy meant to intimidate people out of seeking legal asylum, and the ending of legal status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from what the president has called “shithole countries,” such as Honduras or Haiti.

Now comes a troubling new development that threatens to get buried under all the Brett Kavanaugh pageantry: The Trump administration is reportedly shaking the branches to come up with a legal pretext to strip citizenship from people it perceives as not white enough to belong in the United States. This specific strategy relies on redefining certain immigrants as “criminals,” but in reality, this move is more about […]