Drug wars, crack downs on native rights and labor movements, climate-change induced economic collapse, and the wholesale destruction of local communities through industrial development have created a population of tens of millions of displaced people.

Even when you understand "what's going on" there's very little you can do about it. But one thing Americans can do and have gotten really good at is building big gated communities to keep poor people out while still exploiting their cheap labor.

The urge to arrest and deport large numbers of migrants is, at its root, the urge to build a more advanced and comprehensive gated community. One that can still exploit the labor of America's southern neighbors without sharing any of the infrastructure we've developed to make life pleasant in the states.

And the urge is deepened as the prior generation's investment in infrastructure shows visible signs of collapse. With fewer functioning highways, aquifers, generators, and public services, the American impulse is to start expelling the poorest among us in order to horde the balance.

Pitting the poor against one another prevents them from seeing what’s actually happening.

Pitting the middle class against the poor promises to guarantee another generation of relative prosperity. This is a kind of ultimatum issued by the very rich, and not unique to a particular party. You either get on the right side of immigration, or we take away your privileges and expel you, too.

The fight between Dems and Repubs is less about whether we do a mass expulsion (its easy to find homeless roundups in a dozen major blue cities from Houston to NYC to Chicago) and more about who we target for atrocity.