2. Scapegoating Minorities
Blaming Immigrants for Everything
When times are hard, leaders who want more power go looking for a scapegoat. Immigrants are the easiest target. Blame them for rent, crime, jobs, and the price of eggs. It pulls attention away from the real problems, and it makes hate feel normal.
If you hear politicians claim that every problem is the fault of immigrants, that's a huge red flag.
This isn't new. We dug into where this playbook comes from in Why Are Republicans Dehumanizing Immigrants?
Creating "Us vs. Them"
Fascism needs an enemy. The story is always the same. There are "real Americans," and there are dangerous outsiders who want to destroy everything you love.
It's a classic fascist move. Unite your base by giving them someone to hate.
Republicans and right-wing media have this down to a science. The target changes every few months: immigrants, drag queens, transgender kids, "the radical Left." They take an issue that affects a tiny sliver of people, if it exists at all, and blow it up until it feels like an emergency. (Trans athletes in women's sports is the big one right now.)
They'll call anything a Democrat does “socialism,” "Marxism," or "communism," too. It's always the other side that's the real fascist.
In 2026, the government made the "us vs. them" story official policy.
In May, the White House released a new counterterrorism strategy. It promises the "rapid identification and neutralization" of violent groups whose ideology it calls "anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist."
Who decides which groups qualify? The same administration that labeled "antifa" a terrorist organization, even though it isn't an organization at all.
While rolling it out, White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian Gorka mentioned nonbinary people in the same breath as killers.
In August, the Department of Health and Human Services released a study claiming people who support gender-affirming care are more likely to be left-wing authoritarians who think political violence is okay. NPR reported that it wasn't peer reviewed, and its data and funding weren't made public. Experts tore it apart.
When the counterterrorism office and the health department both describe trans people as a threat, they're painting a target on people's backs.
Mass Deportation
President Trump put Tom Homan, his "Border Czar," in charge of mass deportation. Stephen Miller is the evil mind behind it. Homan is leading the charge.
In 2026, the deportation machine got bigger, deadlier, and more expensive.
The numbers:
- ICE held 70,766 people on January 24, 2026. That's the most in the agency's history.
- Since last October, ICE has kept more than 60,000 people locked up at any given time.
- 37 people died in ICE custody in the fiscal year that just ended. That makes it the deadliest year on record for the agency.
- Deaths are rising faster than the number of people locked up. Human Rights Watch found the death rate in ICE detention jumped 138% in Trump's first year back.
The camps:
People still take selfies by the road sign for Alligator Alcatraz. Florida's Attorney General even had an online store selling Alligator Alcatraz merchandise.
Then there's Camp East Montana, ICE's giant tent camp at Fort Bliss in Texas. A New Yorker investigation found a homicide, medical neglect, and suffering that seems to be the whole point.
The government also paid CoreCivic $1.47 billion for two detention centers. Locking up immigrants is big business.
The people:
Behind every number is a person with a family still waiting for answers.
- Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens, were shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in January.
- Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old father, was killed by an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, in July. He wasn't even the person they were looking for.
- Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Houston father of three, was shot and killed by ICE in a mistaken-identity stop on his way to work.
- Pierre Damas Bel was a 20-year-old Haitian honors student in Springfield, Ohio. ICE made him wear an ankle monitor. He died in late August.
About six weeks after the Minneapolis killings, Trump fired Kristi Noem. He replaced her with Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who was confirmed in March. New boss, same cruelty.
Since then, ICE announced plans to buy up to $20 million in electric shock gloves. Immigration courts started holding "mega master" hearings with about 150 people at once.
If you miss yours, you can get a deportation order without anyone hearing your side.
In September, Amnesty International released a report documenting racial profiling and killings, and called for ICE to be abolished.
There are too many horror stories to fit here. You can find them all in our Immigration Topic Hub.
There have also been multiple cases of people deported without due process. The U.S. Constitution gives everyone, including immigrants who are here illegally, the right to due process. (Part of that is habeas corpus, the right to challenge your detention in court.)
The erosion of Constitutional rights is one of the most serious signs of fascism. It's a warning that our democracy is being dismantled. And what the government does to immigrants today, it can do to citizens tomorrow. Ask Renee Good's family.
