Fear: Trump in the White House
by Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster, 2018
by Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster, 2018
[Publication date: September 11, 2018]
THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT
With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.
Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office.
THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT
With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.
Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Bob Woodward is an associate editor at The Washington Post, where he has worked for forty-seven years. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first for the Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, and second in 2003 as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has authored or coauthored eighteen books, all of which have been national nonfiction bestsellers. Twelve of those have been #1 national bestsellers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/opinion/trump-fear-pentagon-harvard.html
Opinion
Fear Comes to America
Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Listen to this article · 5:16 minutes
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by Frank Kendall
July 21, 2025
New York Times
[Mr. Kendall was the secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration.]
Like the fog in Carl Sandburg’s poem, fear has come on little cat feet, seeping silently into various parts of American society. It sits, looking over not just harbor and city, but all of America. I have seen and been affected by this fear over the past several months. It has seeped into our military, our civil service, universities, law firms, C-suites and the leadership of nonprofit organizations.
It wasn’t always this way. During George W. Bush’s presidency, I worked with a number of organizations that opposed his administration’s torture program — euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation” — that was employed by the C.I.A. against suspected terrorists after 9/11. After President Barack Obama signed an executive order ending the program, my colleagues and I held a small party to celebrate. At that party, I remarked that we should be grateful for the fact that we lived in a nation where we could publicly oppose the policies of our government without fear of what that government might do to us. We didn’t worry about being arbitrarily arrested or investigated, having any government funding for our organizations cut off, or being personally and viciously attacked on social media and in the press.
I cannot make that statement today. President Trump does not accept dissent and is using fear to try to suppress it.
Let’s start with our military and civil service, communities with which I have had a lifetime of experience and maintain close contact. The fear in the Pentagon today is palpable. The firings of general officers without cause have sent a chilling message to everyone in uniform. I served through several changes in political leadership as an Army officer and later as a Defense Department civilian. Both the targeted removals of senior military leaders and the mass firings of members of our federal civil service that are taking place are unprecedented and clearly designed to eliminate dissent, replace professionals with political loyalists and create a climate of fear.
Next, the lawyers, another community that I am part of. The Trump administration is attempting to coerce major law firms into refusing to represent clients whom it disfavors and to represent clients it favors. Among the many lawyers I know, this is widely seen as a direct assault on the foundation of our legal system. But for many of those lawyers, fear of losing work that requires access to government buildings, including courts, is a strong motivator. A few law firms have fought back, but some have been anxious enough about the threatened loss of business or access that they have cut “deals” with the administration.
Recently, I spoke to a group of graduate students and professors at Harvard. All were concerned about the effect of the administration’s unmistakable attacks on academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus. While Harvard as an institution has the resources and will to fight back, the loss of funding for research and the fear of interrupted studies are very real for the faculty and students there and elsewhere.
The administration has threatened prosecutions against former government officials and private citizens. It has threatened companies with the loss of government contracts and threatened nonprofit organizations across the country with cuts to funding. This climate of menace and apprehension extends to companies’ willingness to employ or associate with those who criticize Mr. Trump or his administration. I am one of those people.
Since I left the government in January, I have been told by several organizations that they either couldn’t openly employ me, hold my security clearances or otherwise be associated with someone visibly criticizing the administration. In one instance, I was told that a nonprofit that had asked me to serve as a distinguished fellow withdrew that offer because its senior leadership felt I had become too partisan. One corporate chief executive told me I had become toxic for writing and speaking about the administration’s abuses of power. I expected some of these responses, but it’s disappointing to experience, nonetheless. I have lost count of how many of my fellow national security professionals have told me they are grateful that I have spoken out, but in the same breath say they are afraid to do the same.
Mr. Trump’s use of fear as a weapon has been most pronounced with undocumented immigrants and communities of immigrants more broadly. Certainly, Americans strongly support deporting undocumented immigrants who are violent criminals. But the Trump administration has terrorized immigrants from all walks of life, including those in the United States legally. A few years ago, I represented a woman seeking asylum because she had been persecuted by members of her government. When an immigration judge granted her the right to remain in the United States indefinitely, the assumption was that she was finally safe. Now she must live in fear once again.
All these institutions and communities are a source of American strength. Indeed, they make America great. But now they are all, to varying degrees, under attack and experiencing a new sense of trepidation. Fear is the universal tool of authoritarians, and it is a clear sign that our democracy is in danger that so many Americans now have reason to fear their government. Fear has come to our country, and unlike Sandburg’s fog, it isn’t moving on any time soon.
More on President Trump’s second term:
Opinion | Linda Greenhouse
We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty
July 14, 2025
Opinion | David Brooks
What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.
April 17, 2025
Opinion | John W. Keker, Robert A. Van Nest and Elliot R. Peters
Our Law Firm Won’t Cave to Trump. Who Will Join Us?
March 30, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Frank Kendall was the secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/climate/trump-national-park-service-history-changes.html
Listen to this article · 5:16 minutes
Learn more
by Frank Kendall
July 21, 2025
New York Times
[Mr. Kendall was the secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration.]
Like the fog in Carl Sandburg’s poem, fear has come on little cat feet, seeping silently into various parts of American society. It sits, looking over not just harbor and city, but all of America. I have seen and been affected by this fear over the past several months. It has seeped into our military, our civil service, universities, law firms, C-suites and the leadership of nonprofit organizations.
It wasn’t always this way. During George W. Bush’s presidency, I worked with a number of organizations that opposed his administration’s torture program — euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation” — that was employed by the C.I.A. against suspected terrorists after 9/11. After President Barack Obama signed an executive order ending the program, my colleagues and I held a small party to celebrate. At that party, I remarked that we should be grateful for the fact that we lived in a nation where we could publicly oppose the policies of our government without fear of what that government might do to us. We didn’t worry about being arbitrarily arrested or investigated, having any government funding for our organizations cut off, or being personally and viciously attacked on social media and in the press.
I cannot make that statement today. President Trump does not accept dissent and is using fear to try to suppress it.
Let’s start with our military and civil service, communities with which I have had a lifetime of experience and maintain close contact. The fear in the Pentagon today is palpable. The firings of general officers without cause have sent a chilling message to everyone in uniform. I served through several changes in political leadership as an Army officer and later as a Defense Department civilian. Both the targeted removals of senior military leaders and the mass firings of members of our federal civil service that are taking place are unprecedented and clearly designed to eliminate dissent, replace professionals with political loyalists and create a climate of fear.
Next, the lawyers, another community that I am part of. The Trump administration is attempting to coerce major law firms into refusing to represent clients whom it disfavors and to represent clients it favors. Among the many lawyers I know, this is widely seen as a direct assault on the foundation of our legal system. But for many of those lawyers, fear of losing work that requires access to government buildings, including courts, is a strong motivator. A few law firms have fought back, but some have been anxious enough about the threatened loss of business or access that they have cut “deals” with the administration.
Recently, I spoke to a group of graduate students and professors at Harvard. All were concerned about the effect of the administration’s unmistakable attacks on academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus. While Harvard as an institution has the resources and will to fight back, the loss of funding for research and the fear of interrupted studies are very real for the faculty and students there and elsewhere.
The administration has threatened prosecutions against former government officials and private citizens. It has threatened companies with the loss of government contracts and threatened nonprofit organizations across the country with cuts to funding. This climate of menace and apprehension extends to companies’ willingness to employ or associate with those who criticize Mr. Trump or his administration. I am one of those people.
Since I left the government in January, I have been told by several organizations that they either couldn’t openly employ me, hold my security clearances or otherwise be associated with someone visibly criticizing the administration. In one instance, I was told that a nonprofit that had asked me to serve as a distinguished fellow withdrew that offer because its senior leadership felt I had become too partisan. One corporate chief executive told me I had become toxic for writing and speaking about the administration’s abuses of power. I expected some of these responses, but it’s disappointing to experience, nonetheless. I have lost count of how many of my fellow national security professionals have told me they are grateful that I have spoken out, but in the same breath say they are afraid to do the same.
Mr. Trump’s use of fear as a weapon has been most pronounced with undocumented immigrants and communities of immigrants more broadly. Certainly, Americans strongly support deporting undocumented immigrants who are violent criminals. But the Trump administration has terrorized immigrants from all walks of life, including those in the United States legally. A few years ago, I represented a woman seeking asylum because she had been persecuted by members of her government. When an immigration judge granted her the right to remain in the United States indefinitely, the assumption was that she was finally safe. Now she must live in fear once again.
All these institutions and communities are a source of American strength. Indeed, they make America great. But now they are all, to varying degrees, under attack and experiencing a new sense of trepidation. Fear is the universal tool of authoritarians, and it is a clear sign that our democracy is in danger that so many Americans now have reason to fear their government. Fear has come to our country, and unlike Sandburg’s fog, it isn’t moving on any time soon.
More on President Trump’s second term:
Opinion | Linda Greenhouse
We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty
July 14, 2025
Opinion | David Brooks
What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.
April 17, 2025
Opinion | John W. Keker, Robert A. Van Nest and Elliot R. Peters
Our Law Firm Won’t Cave to Trump. Who Will Join Us?
March 30, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Frank Kendall was the secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/climate/trump-national-park-service-history-changes.html
Trump Told Park Workers to Report Displays That ‘Disparage’ Americans. Here’s What They Flagged.
Descriptions and displays at scores of parks and historic sites have been flagged for review in connection with an executive order from President Trump.
Listen to this article · 11:49 minutes
An exhibit at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia recounts the brutality of slavery and was flagged for review. Credit: Hannah Beier for The New York Times
by Maxine Joselow and Lisa Friedman
Reporting from Washington
July 22, 2025
New York Times
by Maxine Joselow and Lisa Friedman
Reporting from Washington
July 22, 2025
New York Times
At Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, the Trump administration is set to review, and possibly remove or alter, signs about how climate change is causing sea levels to rise.
At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the administration will soon decide whether to take down exhibits on the brutality of slavery.
And at Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, Trump officials are scrutinizing language about the imprisonment of Native Americans inside the Spanish stone fortress.
According to internal documents reviewed by The New York Times, employees of the National Park Service have flagged descriptions and displays at scores of parks and historic sites for review in connection with President Trump’s directive to remove or cover up materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans.”
In an executive order in March, the president instructed the Park Service to review plaques, films and other materials presented to visitors at 433 sites around the country, with the aim of ensuring they emphasize the “progress of the American people” and the “grandeur of the American landscape.”
Employees had until last week to flag materials that could be changed or deleted, and the Trump administration said it would remove all “inappropriate” content by Sept. 17, according to the internal agency documents. The public also has been asked to submit potential changes.
In response, a coalition of librarians, historians and others organized through the University of Minnesota has launched a campaign called “Save Our Signs.” It is asking the public to take photos of existing content at national parks and upload it. The group is using those images to build a public archive before any materials may be altered. So far, it has more than 800 submissions.
The directive on national parks is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to promote a more positive view of the nation’s history. In his executive order, the president also took aim at the Smithsonian Institution, claiming that it had promoted “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”
Critics have warned that these moves could lead to the erasure of difficult periods of American history, as well as contributions made by people of color, gay and transgender figures, women and other marginalized groups.
“The national parks were established to tell the American story, and we shouldn’t just tell all the things that make us look wonderful,” said Dan Wenk, a former superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. “We have things in our history that we are not proud of anymore.”
Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, said many Park Service employees are obeying the executive order even though they disagree with it.
“Park staff are in a bind here,” Ms. Brengel said. “If they don’t comply with this directive, they could lose their jobs.”
Elizabeth Peace, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, the parent agency of the Park Service, said the Trump administration’s move “is not about rewriting the past.”
“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” Ms. Peace said in a statement. “Our goal is to foster honest, respectful storytelling that educates visitors while honoring the complexity of our nation’s shared journey.”
Several Republican lawmakers have applauded the administration’s efforts to purge the federal government of “woke” initiatives that portray historical events or figures as racist, sexist or otherwise flawed.
“Our monuments should celebrate our founders and tell the story of what makes America great, not push woke talking points to please radical activists,” Senator Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, said in a statement.
Already, the Interior Department has taken down sticky notes that Park Service employees used to annotate an exhibit at Muir Woods National Monument in California.
The sticky notes, which park staff added in 2021, were an attempt to present a more comprehensive history of the monument. They highlighted the Indigenous people who originally cared for the land, as well as the role of women in the 1908 creation of Muir Woods.
They also argued that while “influential, philanthropic white men” are frequently credited with preserving the site, problematic aspects of their legacies are often overlooked. For instance, John Muir, the famous naturalist for whom the park is named, used racist language in writings about African Americans and Native Americans.
The notes were removed last week pending a review in connection with the executive order, according to Joshua Winchell, a spokesman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Muir Woods.
“As we implement the order, we will review all signs in the park as well as all the public input we receive about the signs,” Mr. Winchell said in an email.
In addition to reshaping the way the parks present history, the executive order could result in the removal of information about the risks that climate change poses in the present day. At Cape Hatteras National Seashore, for instance, the internal documents show that a Park Service employee asked the Trump administration to review a sign that explains how rising seas are threatening the habitat of wild horses.
“We do not believe it to be in violation, but would like someone to review if messaging of climate change and sea level rise reduces the focus on the grandeur, beauty and abundance,” the employee wrote.
As global warming has caused ice sheets and glaciers to melt, water levels around Cape Hatteras have risen by about one foot in the last century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are projected to rise by another 10 to 14 inches by 2050.
“From a scientific perspective, there’s no question that a warming planet is generating that long-term sea level rise,” said Robert Young, who directs the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. “I guess you could have a discussion as to what degree it is the National Park Service’s job to point that out.”
But Patrick Gonzalez, who served as principal climate change scientist at the Park Service during Mr. Trump’s first term, said that is precisely the agency’s job.
“Communicating the science of climate change helps to educate the public on complex scientific issues, and it provides incentives for people to live more sustainably and reduce their carbon pollution,” said Dr. Gonzalez, who is now with the University of California, Berkeley.
At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles Tennessee and North Carolina, park officials have also flagged for review a plaque about the harm that air pollution poses to plants and animals. The plaque notes that “fossil fuel-fired power plants, motor vehicles and industry are the primary sources of these pollutants.”
The bulk of the content identified for review in the internal documents addresses the struggle for equality of Black Americans, from slavery to the civil rights movement.
“Text addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil War,” one Park Service official noted of a plaque at the Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee, the site of one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War.
“This is both historically correct and legislatively mandated, but we ask for further review to confirm it is aligned” with the executive order, the official wrote.
At Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Louisiana, a park official noted an exhibit about slaves who tried to escape but were captured. The official was concerned because the exhibit identified the enslavers by name and mentioned that returned slaves were publicly whipped.
Rolonda Teal, an anthropologist who has studied the Cane River park, said that Congress established it in 1994 to preserve the history of two plantations that housed hundreds of slaves for over 200 years.
“If you don’t talk about the names of the slaves, the names of the enslavers, the whipping of the slaves, then you’re only telling white history in America,” Dr. Teal said.
“Why would you visit a plantation if you don’t want to hear the whole story, and how could it be a plantation if there weren’t slaves?” she added. “So that’s the ridiculousness of it all.”
On the National Mall in Washington, a sign labeled “Working Waterfront” describes what had been a 19th century wharf and a landing spot for goods moving along a Potomac River tributary. “You might hear the shouts of dockworkers, many of them enslaved people until the end of the Civil War,” the sign says. A park employee called attention to it, asking, “Is the word ‘enslaved’ OK here?”
And at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, also in Washington, a park official raised concerns about books sold at the gift shop, writing, “Not sure if they’re all considered disparaging, but they are about either Malcolm X or Freedom Riders or slavery.”
Clayborne Carson, who directed the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University and helped design the memorial, said the concerns about the books underscored a longstanding inability to confront racism in America.
“It’s sad to see a lot of things I thought would be resolved in the past have kind of come back,” he said, adding, “I don’t know how you can have a better future without looking honestly at the past.”
At the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, park employees flagged an exhibit panel that discussed the bell’s travels across the country during the post-Reconstruction period. The panel “calls out the systemic and violent racism and sexism that existed at the time,” employees noted.
And at the nearby Independence National Historical Park, where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were debated and signed, park staff raised concerns about an exhibit that memorializes nine slaves whom George Washington had brought from Mount Vernon. One panel emphasizes the intentional brutality of slaveholders, which included whippings, beatings, torture and rape.
PHOTO: Hannah Beier for The New York Times
Independence National Historical Park
Philadelphia
Excerpted submission from park employee:
“The following panels and illustrations may need revision if found that they are inappropriately disparaging to historical figures ... The artwork depicts Washington’s hands in the foreground; one with the Fugitive Slave Act, the other with a quill signing the Act, in the background a posse of white men are depicted with clubs and guns shooting at four black men (one who has been shot in the head) presumably escaping from slavery.”
Other content flagged for review addresses the federal government’s fraught relationship with Native American tribes.
At San Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, a park employee highlighted a panel on the imprisonment of Plains Indian tribes in the late 19th century. The panel noted that the U.S. Army had sent 74 prisoners from the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho and Caddo tribes to the fort after the Red River War, which sought to force Native Americans onto reservations.
“Text of panel needs review for language referring to tribes having choice of extinction or assimilation,” the employee wrote. “Language of U.S. Government giving the ‘choice’ of extinction could be considered negative toward the United States.”
Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said the president is insisting on a narrow vision of America that he and his followers find most comfortable.
“President Trump is a storyteller and I think he wants a vision of history that he believes matches his understanding of the country,” Dr. Zelizer said.
Documents detailing the Park Service’s internal communications plans, also reviewed by The Times, instruct agency officials to respond to queries by saying that the Trump administration is focused on “historical accuracy.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Maxine Joselow reports on climate policy for The Times.
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
See more on: U.S. Politics, National Park Service, Donald Trump
Trump Is Building a Machine to Disappear People
Credit: Natalie Arrué
Listen to this article · 7:27 minutes
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by Jeff Crisp
July 23, 2025
New York Times
[Mr. Crisp is an expert on migration and humanitarian issues.]
In May, the United States flew a group of eight migrants to Djibouti, a small state in the Horn of Africa. For weeks, the men — who are from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan — were detained in a converted shipping container on a U.S. military base. More than a month later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the men, who had all been convicted of serious crimes, could be transferred to their final destination: South Sudan, a country on the brink of famine and civil war. Tom Homan, the border czar, acknowledged that he didn’t know what happened to them once they were released from U.S. custody. “As far as we’re concerned,” he said, “they’re free.”
Deporting foreign nationals to countries other than their homeland has quickly become a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Thousands of people have been sent to countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico and Panama. At a recent summit of West African leaders, President Trump pressed them to admit deportees from the United States, reportedly emphasizing that assisting in migration was essential to improving commercial ties with the United States. All told, administration officials have reached out to dozens of states to try to strike deals to accept deportees. The administration is making progress: Last week, it sent five men to the tiny, landlocked country of Eswatini in southern Africa after their home countries allegedly “refused to take them back,” according to an assistant homeland security secretary, Tricia McLaughlin. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In some ways, this is nothing new. It has become increasingly common for the world’s most prosperous countries to relocate immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees to places with which they have little or no prior connection. Previous U.S. administrations from both parties have sought third-country detentions as easy fixes. In the 1990s, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both sent thousands of Haitian refugees to detention camps in Guantánamo Bay before forcibly repatriating most of them to Haiti.
What is new about the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, unlike previous European or even past U.S. attempts, is their breadth and scale, effectively transforming migrant expulsions into a tool for international leverage. By deporting foreign nationals to often unstable third countries, the Trump administration is not only creating a novel class of exiles with little hope of returning to either the United States or their country of origin, but also explicitly using these vulnerable populations as bargaining chips in a wider strategy of diplomatic and geopolitical deal making.
This strategy marks a significant evolution in a practice that has been gaining traction throughout the developed world. In the early 2000s, Australia devised the so-called Pacific Solution, an arrangement that diverted asylum seekers arriving by boat or intercepted at sea to holding centers in the island states of Nauru and Papua New Guinea in exchange for benefits, including development aid and financial support. In 2016, amid what was then the largest displacement of people in Europe since World War II, the European Union struck a deal that allowed it to send migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey through irregular means back to Turkey — to the tune of six billion euros.
Some of these efforts have faced legal challenges. Starting in 2022, for example, the United Kingdom attempted to establish a program that would have automatically deported some asylum seekers and migrants entering the U.K. illegally to Rwanda, costing over half a billion pounds — more than 200 million of which were paid upfront. The British Supreme Court ruled that the policy was unlawful, and Britain’s prime minister scrapped the plan last year.
But many countries remain undeterred. In 2023, Italy signed a deal that allowed it to send certain migrants rescued by Italian ships in international waters to detention centers in Albania, and is persisting with the effort even in the face of legal setbacks. This spring, the European Union proposed establishing “return hubs” in third countries for rejected asylum seekers.
Although these deals take various forms, states that enter them are motivated by similar concerns. The world’s richer states wish to retain control of their borders and are particularly aggrieved by the arrival of people who enter by irregular means, especially when they are coming from low-income countries that many associate with crime, violence and terrorism. Governments in destination countries are attracted to such deals by the promise of financial, diplomatic and military support.
Throughout much of the West, as public sentiment has turned against newcomers, policymakers and pundits alike have portrayed migrants as a threat to national security and social stability. These migrants, they argue, impose an unsustainable burden on government budgets and public services and deprive citizens of jobs. Racism and xenophobia, fueled by populist politicians and right-wing media outlets, have also played an important part in creating a toxic environment in which the expulsion of migrants to arbitrary destinations is increasingly considered legitimate.
But how legitimate is it? Third-country deportations often sidestep due process and violate international law, under which it is forbidden for states to deport such people to any place where their life or liberty would be at risk. It is also plainly unethical, imposing additional stress on people who have undergone traumatic journeys and who are then dumped in far-off, unfamiliar places.
Several of the countries slated as deportation destinations have bleak human rights records and are unsafe for all civilians, let alone foreign deportees, who are likely to be targets of abuse and exploitation. In the worst instances, as with U.S. deportees in El Salvador, they can find themselves in jails where the authorities routinely inflict physical and psychological violence on inmates.
These deportation deals also have corrosive consequences for international politics. They encourage smaller, weaker countries to engage in transactional behavior, commodifying human life by trading immigrant bodies for cash, development aid, diplomatic support and international impunity. They may even strengthen the impunity of authoritarian regimes that violate the human rights of their own citizens. In the case of El Salvador, for example, deportees from the United States reportedly included some leaders of the criminal gang MS-13, who were thought to be in a position to expose links between President Nayib Bukele and the gang.
For nearly three-quarters of a century, a network of international instruments, institutions and norms have acted as guardrails, if imperfect ones, to ensure that refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants are treated humanely. Now it seems as though the president is looking to rewrite the rules of this system to one in which people are pawns.
By expanding the practice of forced relocation, Mr. Trump is using migrants as currency in a global network of geopolitical negotiation. His administration is normalizing the use of vulnerable people as bargaining chips to extract better deals with friends and foes alike. He is setting a dangerous precedent for other democratic countries by ignoring the moral and reputational cost of shipping desperate people into terrible conditions. As Mr. Trump works to bring this new paradigm to life, leaders the world over will be watching closely. If he can pull it off, so can they.
More on migration:
Opinion | Blas Nuñez-Neto
I Was One of Biden’s Border Advisers. Here’s How to Fix Our Immigration System.
July 15, 2025
Opinion | Rebecca Hanson, David Smilde and Verónica Zubillaga
This Is Not the Right Way to Curb Migration
April 4, 2025
Opinion | Isabel Castro
How the ICE Raids Are Warping Los Angeles
June 22, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeff Crisp is a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Center and was formerly the head of policy development at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
