The Hellscapes of Their Minds

ICE says it’s going to “flood” New York. Good luck with that

On Monday Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s border czar, declared that New York City isn’t cooperating sufficiently with ICE’s efforts to round up immigrants, so ICE is going to “flood the zone” with agents. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how this could end very, very badly.

Suppose, for example, that masked, armed ICE agents were to descend in large numbers on a thronged street like Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, seizing people they imagine might be dangerous illegals. How would the agents make that judgment? According to Homan, they’d do it in part based on “physical appearance” — although he’s tried, unconvincingly, to walk that back.

But if that’s how ICE agents see things, basically everyone on Roosevelt Avenue will look to them like a criminal alien. So the risk of angry, possibly violent confrontations — in particular of ICE agents running amok because they perceive themselves as being under threat — will be high.

And what if there are, as I expect there would be, large demonstrations against ICE’s actions? How many people will end up being tear-gassed?

Why run the risk of all these consequences? The constant refrain from Trump administration officials is that big cities with large immigrant populations are drowning in a wave of immigrant crime. So Queens, where almost half the population is foreign born and around 10 percent are undocumented, must be a terrifying urban hellscape. It must be one of those places where, as Trump puts it,

you can't walk across the street to get a loaf of bread you get shot you get mugged you get raped you get whatever

Or here’s how the Republican National Committee puts it:

But Queens is nothing like that. Last year there were 56 murders in the borough, which has more than 2 million residents. That’s down from 312 murders in 1990, when the borough had a lot fewer immigrants. Queens’s murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants is also well below the national average. And I have a lot of friends in Queens. Although New York does have rats (and always did) I haven’t seen any feces, and my friends aren’t afraid to walk across the street.

New York City as a whole has a very low rate of violent deaths by national standards, partly because of its low murder rate, but also because many of its residents take public transit, which is much safer than driving:

Source: Scientific American

Actually, if you’re worried about a public safety crisis in the United States, you should worry both about guns and about the rising number of vehicle fatalities, which are much higher in America than in other rich countries:

Source: New York Times

Again, however, that’s not how Trump’s people see it. Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, has been waging a nonstop campaign against New York’s highly successful congestion pricing scheme, which has led both to faster travel and to a reduction in car crashes. According to him, liberals

force people into the subway, and the subway's not safe.

I guess I’m one of those people forced into the subway. I mean, I could take a taxi to the office or drive myself (but where would I park?), but the subway — which feels pretty safe to me — is both much cheaper and faster. Tyranny!

Back to flooding the zone with ICE agents: Do Trump and his people really believe the untrue claims they make about urban crime and the role of immigrants? Or are they basically a cover story for racism? My guess is that this is a false dichotomy. Racism is surely the underlying factor. But people are often very good at believing false stories that justify their actions — even, or actually especially, when their actions are cruel and destructive.

My guess is that an attempt by ICE to put New York under siege will mostly fall flat. Yet there will, as I said, be a serious risk of violent confrontations. Even if there aren’t, we know based on experience elsewhere that many innocent people — legal residents and even citizens with the wrong “physical appearance” — would be caught up in the dragnets. And some crucial workers might stay home out of justified fear of ICE arrests.

But Trump and co. might see the prospect of inflicting damage on New York City as a benefit, not a cost. And in any case they’re probably — probably — more interested in the theater of an immigrant crackdown than in actually rounding up large numbers of people. After all, a confrontation in New York might distract the public from the Epstein story.

So I’m hoping that Homan’s tough talk won’t translate into a lot of action — in part because there’s a good chance that the whole thing would quickly become a farce. But I’m worried.

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