I'm Naomi Klein. You're listening to The Dig as well you should be, and you can support them on

patreon.com.

Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin Magazine. My name is Daniel Denver, and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island.

Donald Trump and the Republican Congress are failing to repeal Obamacare and have so far done little

to advance their reactionary legislative agenda. That's great news. But what Trump has successfully

done is spread fear through immigrant communities

by demonizing migrants and empowering ICE agents to sweep up pretty much anyone in the country without

the right papers. And with Trump's Muslim and refugee bans, which are currently before the

Supreme Court, the president has made bigotry the explicit

cornerstone of immigration policy. But on immigration, as on other matters, Trump does not

emerge from a vacuum. Mainstream Democratic and Republican politicians have for decades

built a giant deportation machinery and militarize the border beyond recognition. And in doing so,

they have only added fuel to the nativist fire that helped bring Trump to office. Today, my guest is

Dara Lind, the immigration reporter at Vox. Immigration policy and politics are as confusing and

complex as things get.

And Lind is one of the few reporters who consistently gets it right in all the maddeningly cruel details.

Darry Lind, welcome to The Dig.

Good to be on.

I'm hoping you can catch us up on immigration.

The Trump administration has so far failed to accomplish so many things, but it has no doubt succeeded in terrorizing immigrant communities. On a policy level,

what's changed under Trump and how is that translated on the ground for immigrants in their

communities? This is exactly the right frame to think about it, Daniel, because the thing is that

...