AP Reports Trump Closes Refugee Doors, Forgetting Who Kicked Them Open
The AP dutifully reports President Trump's 'historic low' of 7,500 refugee admissions for 2025 – 'mostly white South Africans' – and his crackdown following an 'Afghan national' identified as a shooting suspect. One might recall a similar pattern of collective punishment, where the actions of a few are used to justify broad humanitarian restrictions, especially when the affected populations are
non-white and originate from regions destabilized by decades of interventionist foreign policy. The article notes 'economic and national security concerns' as Trump's justification, sidestepping the historical record of how many of these refugee-producing conflicts were either initiated or exacerbated by US-backed actors and weapon sales. It's always a crisis when refugees arrive on 'our'
doorstep, never a crisis when 'our' bombs and proxies create them. The narrative focuses on the symptom—Trump's border cruelty—while ignoring the disease: a continuous, bipartisan foreign policy of military hegemony and economic exploitation that renders millions homeless. The 'Afghan national' suspect, for example, comes from a country where the US spent two decades and trillions of dollars,
leaving behind a power vacuum and pervasive instability. One might wonder why the US can always afford endless wars but never enough compassion for their human cost.