Mexico’s Border Issues Are in Trump’s Crosshairs

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Mexican citizens are by far the largest nationality among the estimated more than 11 million illegal migrants in the United States. An estimated five million are undocumented.

Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has reinforced border security and overseen the deportation of thousands of illegal immigrants. The prospect of a mass return could saturate and overwhelm border cities like Juarez and Tijuana.

These people are often in effect subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. America’s local, state, and federal governments provide billions of dollars in food, housing, and health care entitlements that allow Mexico’s citizens, illegally residing inside the U.S., to free up cash to be sent home.

According to U.S. data, the trade deficit with Mexico has increased from about $50 billion twenty years ago to $160 billion today. That figure doesn’t include the $63 billion American outflow in remittances nor the multi-billion dollar income from the drug cartels’ illicit sales in the U.S. That huge sum constitutes one of Mexico’s largest sources of foreign exchange, surpassing even its tourist and oil revenues.

Trump has cited illegal flows of the deadly opioid fentanyl from Mexico as one of the reasons for the threatened 25 per cent tariff on Mexican goods. Mexico is one of the main trafficking routes for the drug and for the chemicals to manufacture it, most of which come from China, according to U.S. authorities.

Mexico has announced a series of major drug discoveries in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to highlight increased efforts to combat drug smuggling. Nonetheless, Washington has now designated Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa cartel, and six others as global terrorist organizations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the measures Feb. 19, bringing back an idea that failed to come to fruition during Trump’s first term in office. Classifying the cartels as terrorist groups helps disrupt their finances through sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans.

Since taking office, Trump has declared a national border emergency and ordered top officials to prepare to invoke a 1798 law, the Alien Enemies Act, that could allow the administration to swiftly deport suspected gang members without court hearings. “You have to go back that far, because as we’ve grown and grown, our politics and politicians have become weaker and weaker,” he told an October rally in New Mexico. “Our laws don’t mean anything.”

Detentions and deportations that occur under the Alien Enemies Act do not go through the immigration court system, which provides immigrants the chance to seek relief and make their case to stay in the country. Experts have noted that the backlogged court system, where cases can take years, could be a significant obstacle to Trump’s mass deportation plans.

“So that’s where I think the Alien Enemies Act comes in,” explains Jean Lantz Reisz, co-director of the immigration clinic at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law. “I think that Trump is citing this as a way to kind of bypass all of that due process and make it easier to arrest and deport people.”

George Fishman, a former Department of Homeland Security deputy general counsel in the first Trump administration, authored an analysis in 2023 arguing that the law “needs to come out of retirement” and should be considered “a valuable war-fighting tool during future conflicts.”  But Fishman told CNN Jan. 20 that he thinks the law couldn’t be used for a general deportation plan targeting undocumented immigrants.

“I think that wouldn’t stand up in federal court, because I don’t think their actions can be attributed to those governments. And even if they could, then the question comes up of whether mass illegal immigration constitutes an invasion,” he explained. That argument has been made, “but no federal court has yet accepted it. So that would be another hurdle.”

But now the president has gone even further. Trump considers the Mexican state to have essentially become ruled by a single-party, left-populist regime, aligned ideologically and operationally with comparable regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. Like those regimes, maintains Trump, it regards its nation’s trafficking cartels as vehicles for profit.

So it’s possible that officials could try to make the case that certain nations like Mexico are effectively “mafia states” where organized crime has infiltrated the government. “I think a very strong argument could be made that in those situations, the Alien Enemies Act can be employed,” Fishman remarked. But it would be a case-by-case situation.

 

Why is the American Media in Trouble?

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

Though I’m a political science professor at the University of Prince Edward Island, I have worked as a journalist in the past and I also regularly publish opinion articles in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI newspapers.

I recently took part in a public forum at the university on the future of professional journalism and public broadcasting, with participants from print and broadcast media. The speakers addressed the fact that professional journalism organizations are losing audience and trust, and asked how this affects our democracy, especially in keeping those in power accountable.

While the speakers mainly dealt with the Canadian media landscape, I was more concerned with examining the United States, where I see this as an even greater problem. I teach American politics and read American newspapers, and I think the “legacy” media in the United States, including the influential Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post, as well as cable news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and PBS, has become overly politicized.

Critics contend that too many legacy media journalists have become Democratic public relations mouthpieces -- uncritically accepting Democratic talking points and political narratives. This has contributed to Americans’ distrust of legacy media outlets.

They are perceived as having a liberal bias, with their reporters slanting the news to favour the left. After all, after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the Washington Post famously changed its motto to “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” 

Concern has been raised as the lines between commentary and journalism are increasingly blurred. True or not, this has affected the perception of consumers, and these mainstream outlets have lost readers to upstart right-wing periodicals, social media platforms, and Fox New. They in effect function the way “samizdat” do in less free societies.

A few days before last November’s election, Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post, admitted there was a need to rebuild confidence in the paper as an institution. “We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate,” Bezos wrote.

“It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion.”

As he talked about the Los Angeles Times in a Feb. 4 interview with the New York Free Press, owner Patrick Soon-Shiong also sounded remorseful. “I think our public—now I’ve come to understand—really requires authenticity,” he said. That would require, he explained, erecting a Berlin Wall between news and opinion, which sounded like the idea of what a newspaper should be.

Is there really a left-wing media bias, or has the right wing conspired not only to influence the media but also to create a false image of unfairness? Some evidence is available in a study, “A Measure of Media Bias,” by Tim Groseclose of the University of California at Los Angeles and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago, presented in March 2024 at Stanford University's Workshop on the Media & Economic Performance.

 

These researchers set up an objective measure of bias in U.S. television networks,

newspapers, and magazines. The main finding is that the liberal inclination is pronounced. Although Fox News emerges as conservative, it is not nearly as far to the right as many outlets are to the left.

 

This evaluation has become clearer after most legacy media appear to have virtually colluded in hiding evidence about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline for years. It infuriated many voters and probably was a factor in Donald Trump’s victory last November.

According to a report by the Media Research Centre, legacy media news outlets were very biased toward Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. They found that Harris received 78 per cent positive coverage, while Trump received 85 per cent negative coverage.

A Gallup poll taken last September found that Americans have record-low trust in the news media. As a result, centre-right aligned voters are tuning into new media, including podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, All-In, and The Tucker Carlson Show.

Pew Research conducted a study demonstrating that the audience size for traditional media, be it radio, print, or television, is dropping. Another recent Pew study found that 21 per cent of American adults depend on social media influencers for their news. When considering adults ages 18 to 29, this percentage rises to 37 per cent. 

The 2024 election was when the media witnessed for the first time how much its power had been sapped away, its audiences stolen by more interesting formats, in rebel journalism and truly independent commentary on Substack.

Owners of social media companies like Reddit claim that they are becoming the new mainstream. As digital media grows in popularity, radio, television, newspapers, and magazines are becoming less significant. People, it seems, are displaying an eagerness to acquire all the information they need from the internet.

The large partisan divide among professional journalists points to the troubled state of the American news media. Clearly, editors and publishers oversee socialization and hiring practices, and questions about whether these processes need adjustment seem legitimate. Otherwise, the public will increasingly turn to outlets which make no pretence of fairness and objectivity – or even telling the truth.

Henry Srebrnik is a professor political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.

 

 

 

How Should Canada Deal With Trump?

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Someone would make a fortune selling t-shirts with a picture of Donald Trump and the slogan “Make Canada Great Again.”

What?! No, it’s not a joke about making Canada the fifty-first American state. It’s about forcing this country to shape up and act like a sovereign nation. Even the CBC, no friend of the U.S. president, admits this.

“After a decade-plus of U.S. frustrations and concerns being expressed in more discrete, diplomatic and low-profile settings, this has brought Canadians to the table to have serious, meaningful and substantive conversations about national security, public safety and economic security.”

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is wrong about the American deficit with Canada, in purely monetary terms. In 2023, the deficit was $64 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, far less than the “$200 billion or $250 billion” that Trump claims and less than its trade deficits with China, Germany, Mexico and Japan.

Economists say the deficit is driven by Canadian energy exports, including crude oil, which the United States buys at a discount. If energy is removed from the equation, the deficit becomes a surplus.

Canada buys more from the United States than any other country does. If the energy sector -- oil, natural gas, and electricity -- is not included in calculations, the U.S. has had a trade surplus with Canada for the last sixteen years straight. Meanwhile nearly 80 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.

But perception is what counts. America is becoming more like China and Russia -- a regional great power whose statecraft is increasingly amoral and purely self-interested.

Trump and right-wing American politicians have become angry with Canada. They consider Canada profligate and, in its policies, wrong-headed and injurious to itself – and to the United States. (It also didn’t help that Justin Trudeau last fall voiced disappointment that Americans didn’t elect Kamala Harris.)

In their view, Canada doesn’t properly police its border with the U.S., pays little for national defence, and has an open door immigration policy that brought thousands upon thousands of people into the country who, these Republicans think, want to hurt America. Canada also is considered lax about dangerous drugs, which then might enter the United States.

Trump won the 2024 election for many reasons, but illegal immigration was topmost in mind for many of the voters who elected him. And it wasn’t just about the southern border.

“Canada should have acted long ago,” maintains Stephanie Carvin, a former analyst at Canada’s intelligence service, CSIS.  She says the country does have a problem with international criminal groups, money-laundering and fentanyl, despite the oft-repeated statistic that drug busts are rare.

Canada today spends under 1.4 per cent of GDP on defence, well below the 2.0 per cent commitment to NATO, let alone the increased targets currently being discussed. European members of NATO are advocating a 3.0 per cent figure. Serious budget choices lie ahead.

Justin Trudeau has now agreed to Trump’s demands that Canada appoint a fentanyl czar and list cartels as terrorist organizations. A new intelligence order establishes fentanyl-fighting as a priority, with $200 million in funding.

It orders Canada's electronic-intelligence agency to track and disrupt cross-border drug operations; co-ordinates multiple police, border, intelligence and other agencies in one hub; and demands that agencies work with each other and U.S. counterparts.

The Trump economic assault has even affected long-standing internal problems. The regulations that are often criticized as barriers to trade between Canadian provinces could all crumble within a month, according to Anita Anand, federal cabinet minister of transport and internal trade. Why was this not done years ago?

Some Canadians agree. Here’s Alberta premier Danielle Smith: “It needs to be said that Ottawa’s parade of anti-energy policies, red tape on resource development, lack of investment in our Armed Forces and our soft-on-crime laws have left our country in an incredibly vulnerable and weakened state economically and politically.”

Smith had been urging Ottawa to appoint a drugs and border czar, preferably an army general, to head up border security.

“If we are going to thrive as a nation again — if we are going to control our own destiny independent of the actions of other countries — we must stop limiting our own prosperity and inflicting economic wounds on ourselves.”

Smith has also reignited calls to dust off old energy projects, such as Energy East and Northern Gateway, previously not approved and get them constructed. She wants a national joint effort to fast track and build multiple oil and gas pipelines to the east, west and north coasts of Canada and to construct multiple LNG terminals on each coast using steel from Quebec and Ontario, and workers from all over the country.

A pipeline that would move Alberta oil to eastern markets, including Irving Oil’s major Saint John oil refinery in New Brunswick, would effectively do away with the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

In 2023, Canada imported nearly 500,000 barrels of oil a day from countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria even though this country has the third-largest oil reserve in the world.

Trump’s actions are a wake-up call. Might we call it “tough love?” That may be going too far! But it has certainly got Canada moving to tackle long-standing problems.