Pole (pronounced PO-lay) is difficult to translate from Swahili into English. It usually means ‘sorry’, but also sympathy, congratulations, easy or gentle. Mpole is a gentleman, a humble person. Polepole translates as slowly, gradually. Fanya polepole –do it slowly.
Donald Trump had done a whole lot quickly in his first six months – much of it tied up in the courts. But I believe he’s doing one thing polepole.
Let’s leave aside how his ‘big beautiful bill’ takes money from the poor and gives the top 1% an additional $238,000 – Robin Hood in reverse. Let’s also leave aside how Trump’s budget cuts around $930bn from Medicaid and will throw 11.8 million working class Americans off their health insurance over a decade and raise rates for everyone else. It could also take away food assistance from over three million.
ICE’s budget
Rather let’s examine the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement that goes from $10bn in 2025 to $150bn 2026–29, which averages $37.5bn annually, quite a jump. In terms of national defense budgets, ICE at $37.5bn ranks 16th, just behind Canada’s budget at $40bn but greater than Italy’s budget of $31bn, according to Global Firepower.
The National Immigration Law Center notes that ICE’s detention budget would increase to $45bn to build immigration detention facilities for single adults and families with a total capacity of at least 80,000, a price tag 13 times more than ICE’s 2024 detention budget. The bill also allocates $29.9bn in additional funding for ICE activities, including hiring 10,000 new agents, and securing transportation contracts to move migrants between detention centres, and facilitate deportations, as reported by Migrant Insider.
Furthermore, analysis by the Detention Watch Network finds that the bill sets aside $59bn to militarise the border, which includes wall construction, CBP agents and vehicles, and border surveillance technology. In addition, the Department of Defense allocates $1bn to deploy military personnel to the border and to detain migrants. I repeat: “to detain migrants”. That’s totally against the law unless Trump invokes the 1807 Insurrection Act.
Religiousness, whiteness and boyhood
It seems to me two related things are happening. First, Trump’s immigration policy is about skin pigmentation. Trump is a bigot; he’s always been a bigot just as his father before him. Fred Trump got arrested at a Ku Klux Klan riot in Queens, New York in 1927. In 1973, the Justice Department sued Trump Management Corp (Fred and Donald) for racial discrimination in their rental properties. In 1989 Trump said on TV: “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market.”
According to John O’Donnell, Trump told him, “Laziness is a trait in blacks. It’s not anything they can control”.
Trump appeals to mainly white, mainly male, mainly Christian, mainly non-college educated voters. Pew Research Center reported that 78% of Trump voters in 2024 were white; 55% male; 76% Christian of which 29% were evangelical; and 56% non-college educated.
In 2022, a University of Massachusetts poll found two-thirds of Republicans endorse some form of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, which maintains that the growth in the number of immigrants in the US means that soon whites will be the minority and the country is in danger of losing its culture and identity. Anti-immigration fits right in with Trump’s MAGA base. America will be great again when we get rid of 10–15 million immigrants who just happen to be persons of colour.
During Trump’s first time around on 18 January 2018, the Washington Post reported Trump saying: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” (referring to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries). Trump then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries such as Norway.
How many of those that ICE agents are so busy trying to deport now have blue eyes and blonde hair? And yet while they’re doing their level best getting rid of people of colour, Trump rolls out the red carpet for 59 South African immigrants with very light skin pigmentation. Some may have blue eyes and blonde hair, just like Norwegians.
No more catching crooks
During an intense 21 May meeting, Stephen Miller, architect of Trump’s immigration policy and currently his deputy chief of staff, chastised ICE officials for not rounding up enough people to meet the target of one million deported by the end of the year. He gave them a quota of 3,000 a day, according to The Guardian. On 7 July Tom Homan, Trump’s ‘Border Czar’, raised the daily quota to 7,000.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has obtained data that shows serious criminal convicts are a small minority of the people taken into custody by ICE. About two-thirds of the immigrants booked into ICE detention facilities this fiscal year had not been convicted of anything. Violent offenders like murderers, rapists and child molesters were less than 7% of ICE detainees. The administration is jeopardising public safety for the niche goal of reducing the immigrant population. Border Czar Homan puts it this way: “It’s just getting them the hell out of here.”
Cato Institute’s David Bier, in an interview with PBS, said: “By 2028, you’re talking about spending 80% of all law enforcement dollars will go to immigration enforcement…we’re prioritizing this type of law enforcement over all other types of crime…and primarily it’s going to be deportation of people without any criminal records, without any arrest records.” Cato also estimates that the US government will lose over $900bn in revenues from taxes paid by those who will be deported.
Lawlessness becoming law
Time magazine carried out an investigation that reveals how Trump is testing the moral and legal extremes to which the government is willing to go. “The Administration is treating immigration not as a law enforcement matter but is trying illegally to repurpose the tool of war and counterterrorism against migrants”, says Brian Finucane, a lawyer at the International Crisis Group and former State Department official.
And this is the second Trump scheme – how far can he go? ICE tactics are blatantly unconstitutional. They pull up in unmarked vehicles wearing masks, no badges, no ID, and just grab people. More like kidnapping than an official arrest. No charge, no reading of rights, no due process. In fact, the people of colour are not arrested; they are ‘detained’. And they go to a detention centre. Lawbreakers go to jail.
Deploying Marines as a show of force against demonstrators
In June Trump bypassed the California’s governor by calling out 4,000 national guards as a show of force in Los Angeles against demonstrators. It cost the public purse $134mn by the Pentagon’s own estimate. More to the point, he deployed 700 Marines for no other reason than to find out just how far he could go. It put Marines into an awkward situation where they might step over the line into law enforcement. And sure enough, Marines detained an Angelino.
A detention facility was recently opened in the Florida Everglades with a capacity to hold 5,000. It was immediately labeled ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ because it’s situated in a swamp surrounded by alligators and pythons. One hundred national guard troops have been assigned to secure the centre. National guards aren’t supposed to be used as prison guards.
Coincidentally, the Pentagon announced it will deploy 200 Marines to Florida as a contingent of 700 who will also go to Louisiana and Texas to help immigration officials with “logistical and administration support”. Will this be California redux?
What comes next?
And just on cue, the latest from Los Angeles. On 6 July the Trump administration sent immigration officers and about 90 National Guard troops to descend on MacArthur Park with 17 Humvees and four tactical vehicles plus helicopters in what looked like a military operation where kids were having a summer camp. It appears to have been a show of force designed to intimidate immigrants in the surrounding area and Trump’s opponents.
Mayor Karen Bass said: “This is what a city looks like before a coup… LA is a petri dish and this is an experiment signaling the nation – this is what’s coming your way.”
Exactly and Trump backed up her statement the next day when he suggested he could take over New York City if voters elect Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. He added that the administration could take over Washington, DC, as well: “We could run DC I mean we’re, we’re looking at DC. We don’t want crime in DC. We want the city to run well. We would run it so good, it would be run so proper, we’d get the best person to run it…. We want a capital that’s run flawlessly, and it wouldn’t be hard for us to do it.”
LBJ sent Marines to ramp up military operations in Vietnam 60 years ago. George HW Bush sent Marines to Somalia in 1992. His son George W sent Marines to Iraq in 2003. And in 2025 Marines are being sent to American cities. Step by step Trump is easing the country down the road to tyranny … polepole.
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