Final week, actor Dean Cain, recognized for portraying Superman within the Nineteen Nineties TV present Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, introduced that he was going to be sworn in as a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.
Cain stated he was becoming a member of the company as a result of ICE brokers, whom he described because the “actual true heroes”, had been being vilified. He additionally posted an ICE recruitment video on Instagram with the Superman theme tune enjoying within the background, and promoted the beneficiant pay and advantages that include being an ICE agent.
Cain just isn’t the one one. Some pro-Trump celebrities have additionally defended or praised ICE. And Dr Phil tagged alongside on ICE raids in Chicago and quizzed apprehended migrants on digital camera.
However setting apart the irony that the Man of Metal himself was in truth additionally an undocumented alien, why would Superman be so eager to affix ICE’s draconian raids concentrating on immigrants?
For one factor, we have to perceive the attract of those ICE operations.
The visuals of masked federal brokers, hopping out of armoured autos, in military-style gear and swiftly descending on what ICE fans would declare are terrorists, rapists, paedophiles, murderers, drug traffickers and gang members, are deeply comforting for a lot of within the US.
This can be a consequence of an extended historical past the place militarised policing gained a semblance of sacrosanctity within the nation.
It’s effectively documented that modern policing within the US has its origins in slave patrols. Which means that the event of the US legal justice system has its roots not solely in slavery, but additionally within the perception that slave revolts or any effort to upend the racial hierarchy in American society are an existential risk to the established social order.
Through the years, the gradual militarisation of the police has drawn its rationale from intervals of perceived existential crises in American society. Whether or not it was the rise of organised crime throughout the Prohibition period of the Twenties, uprisings throughout the civil rights motion of the Sixties, or when President Richard Nixon declared drug habit “public enemy no 1” requiring an “all-out offensive”, these have served because the pretext for robust, military-style policing on American streets.
This militarisation of the police has been supported by Part 1033 of the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act for Fiscal Yr 1997, which President Invoice Clinton signed into regulation, permitting native regulation enforcement companies to entry extra navy gear from the Division of Protection (DOD). The 1033 programme has allowed the DOD to “promote or switch”, amongst different issues, mine-resistant ambush-protected autos, grenade launchers, aeroplanes and helicopters.
This love affair with ICE can also be a cultural phenomenon. The hard-edged, violent and brash cop, prepared to stray exterior the bounds of the regulation to guard harmless civilians from evil (the Muslim terrorist, the Soviets, the Germans) is a well-liked Hollywood and American TV present staple. This has normalised the notion that to maintain America protected from such existential threats, it’s typically vital to make use of lethal pressure or extrajudicial actions, irrespective of how merciless or extreme they might appear.
After all, in all of this, we can’t ignore the deep, anti-immigrant sentiments that drive the help for ICE.
In my grownup life, this xenophobia has taken many kinds.
As an 18-year-old faculty scholar in upstate New York within the early 2000s, I used to be the bodily epitome of all issues evil and anti-American because the nation waged its “International Struggle on Terror”. On the time, I keep in mind a fellow scholar justifying the additional safety checks I needed to endure by at airports, saying, “You can not ignore the truth that you appear to be the individuals who hate us.”
In my late 20s as a PhD scholar in Copenhagen, I needed to hear a senior colleague say, “You’re Indian. I assume your talent is raping ladies.” He was referring to the 2012 Delhi bus gang rape and homicide that obtained international consideration.
Globally, we’ve got additionally seen a proliferation of actuality TV exhibits like Border Safety: Australia’s Entrance Line and Nothing to Declare UK that declare to indicate the fact of the a number of threats that Western nations encounter at their borders.
It’s now all however commonplace to think about the determine of the migrant as a vessel for all issues we concern and hate.
When Syrian refugees arrived in Europe in 2015, they had been portrayed as a safety risk, a burden on public companies, and a risk to European values.
Final yr, the UK noticed a wave of far-right anti-immigrant riots after a mass stabbing of ladies in Southport. The riots adopted false claims that the attacker was a Muslim migrant. Rioters attacked minority-owned companies, the properties of immigrants and accommodations housing asylum seekers.
This yr, Eire has seen anti-immigrant assaults on South Asians, together with a six-year-old woman who was punched within the face and hit within the genital space. Reportedly, these assaults have been fuelled by anger over the affordability and housing disaster.
Such anti-immigrant sentiments have been endemic to American politics.
Whereas the discourse throughout the Obama years was not as antagonistic, the elimination of undocumented migrants was nonetheless a political precedence. President Obama was known as “deporter-in-chief”, and in 2012, deportations peaked at 409,849. That stated, in the identical yr, he additionally signed the Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) coverage, permitting undocumented migrants who had been introduced into the nation as minors to use for “renewable two-year intervals of deferred motion from deportation, permitting them to stay within the nation”. DACA additionally made them eligible for work permits.
Deportations had been additionally a precedence throughout the Biden years. In fiscal yr 2023, US immigration authorities deported or returned 468,000 migrants, surpassing any single yr throughout Trump’s first time period.
That stated, throughout Trump’s tenure within the White Home, the anti-immigrant rhetoric has been vicious, and the Republican chief doesn’t draw back from portraying migrants as synonymous with criminality and an existential risk to the demographic, ethical and cultural cloth of the US.
This framing of immigrants as a problematic presence in American society served as a pretext for Trump’s plan to construct a wall throughout the US-Mexico border to cease the motion of undocumented migrants, the journey ban on residents from a number of Muslim nations, and a suspension of the US Refugee Admissions Program.
Trump’s second time period has solely been a continuation of such insurance policies. With the genocide ongoing in Gaza and the concurrent visibility of the Palestine solidarity motion, the anti-immigration motion has merged with anti-Palestinian racism, with ICE additionally concentrating on pro-Palestine activists whom the Trump administration claims maintain views which are antithetical to American values.
With all of this within the background, it then is sensible that an actor who as soon as performed an undocumented alien on TV and who himself has Japanese heritage would be a part of ICE. Within the period of Trump, concentrating on the drained and poor huddled plenty who yearn to breathe free appears to be the American manner.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
