Immigrants who waited for years, had taken classes, paid rising fees, passed background checks, and aced the new U.S. citizenship test, found themselves being pulled from the line last week before they could take the oath of allegiance at their naturalization ceremony.

Why? Because one individual from their home country (out of the 80,000 refugees who have been resettled in the U.S.) killed a National Guard member and gravely injured another. Or because 79 out of 260,000 people of the same descent are under investigation for defrauding social services. Or simply because their place of birth is one of the nations President Donald Trump has labeled “shithole countries.”

If it wasn’t obvious before, the administration’s latest actions and hateful rhetoric make it abundantly clear that following the rules, personal merit, and character mean little.

In Trump’s America, racial hierarchy is everything.

As Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, largely credited with orchestrating the administration’s immigration agenda, explained on X: “This is the great lie of mass migration. You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies” from what he called “failed states” and “broken homelands.”

If you are an immigrant or even a naturalized citizen from a non-European country, you likely are included in those deemed “non-compatible with Western Civilization,” as Trump said in his Thanksgiving rant on Truth Social.

The president put it even more bluntly during his latest cabinet meeting, when he repeatedly characterized Somalis in the U.S. as “garbage,” said they contribute nothing, and that he doesn’t want them in the country. Never mind that 84% of Somalis in the U.S. are citizens — 39% of them native born and another 45% naturalized — whom the president is supposed to be serving, not reviling.

Unlike his first term, when experienced civil servants, the judicial and legislative branches, and even some cabinet members worked to shield the nation’s institutions from Trump’s most unconstitutional and undemocratic proposals, the guardrails are down this time around, and the prejudice and bigotry are freely flowing.

Trump’s mostly inexperienced and grossly incompetent cabinet members pumped their fists and cheered on his deranged rant about Somalis. Republican legislators have slowed or sought to derail investigations into Trump’s actions. And while the lower courts are still upholding constitutionality, the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly issued rulings in which the minority dissents warn about assaults on democracy and constitutional protections.

The high court has recently agreed to hear the administration’s argument for repealing the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to those born on U.S. soil — something Trump has been gunning for since his first term, but which was largely thought to be legally unwinnable. Still, as we’ve seen recently, even those things believed firmly anchored in our collective identities — that we are a country tied to respecting constitutional law, that we are a nation built by immigrants (both those who came voluntarily and involuntarily) — are less sacrosanct than we thought.

And yet, as traditional institutional checks and balances waver, Trump’s generational ruination tour may be derailed by those he once believed gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to do: everyday Americans.

Approval for Trump’s handling of immigration — one of the issues that contributed to his election victory — has fallen 9 percentage points (to 37%) since the first quarter of this year. The president’s overall approval rating of 36% is only 2 percentage points higher than his lowest ever, which he reached right after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol during his first term.

Everyday Americans made Kilmar Ábrego García a household name. Everyday Americans have formed the rapid response teams in cities where the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has deployed its unconstitutional immigration blitzes, webs, and crunches. Everyday Americans gather by the millions to declare they aren’t willing to live under kings or authoritarians.

As the year draws to a close, and those who believe in the rule of law face the challenges that will present themselves leading to the midterm elections, we need to remember that the American experiment depends on us.

Immigrant or native, only the people can save the people.

_____

©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.