The real meaning of Trump's obsession with building a border Wall has been obvious from the day in June 2015 when Trump first promised to build it as part of a racist campaign rant against Mexican immigrants as "criminals", "rapists" and "drug dealers".The Wall has nothing to do with US security or the safety of Americans (something Trump seems oblivious to as he abandons the fight against ISIS in Syria). To the contrary, the Wall is nothing but a monument to bigotry and hatred against nonwhite immigrants.

The Wall is also an example of fascism in action. It is an exercise in raw power - the power to override the will of a democratically elected Congress which adamantly refuses to approve funding for. We should also not forget that Trump originally promised to force Mexico to pay for the Wall in a supreme gesture of humiliation against Mexico - and a warning to all Latin American and other nonwhite countries not to "send" any more immigrants to the US.

Trump's Wall fixation also carries a heavy price tag for the American people - the threat of another government shutdown which could be bigger than last year's, according to an October 17 Washington Post story.

The Post reports:

"The budget fight is expected to get even messier. Trump is not interested in signing other domestic spending bills until there is agreement on the border wall,, according to a senior administration official...Funding for many federal agencies expires November 21, and an impasse would lead to a sizable government shutdown, bigger in scope than what happened one year ago."

TheWP story also relates:

"White House officials have said that if lawmakers don't appropriate the funds Trump has demanded for the wall, they will circumvent Congress again and move money away from the military budget...

'That is the linchpin,' Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala) said of the border wall. Trump is 'very interested in the wall, very adamant about it.'"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/10/17/latest-failed-senate-vote-sets-up-big-fight-over-border-wall-budget/

Commentator Osita Mwanevu argues in a September 29 New Republic article that both Trump's wall and his racist immigration agenda in general should also be grounds for impeachment, and that by conducting only a narrowly focused investigation relating to Ukraine, Democratic leaders are in effect missing the main point - or many main points - of Trump's abuse of power and damage to America's democracy.

He writes:

"The wall. This is one of the scandals that we know the least about. It was reported several weeks ago that Trump offered to pardon officials who might commit crimes in order to make progress on the border wall."

But it not only allegations of possible criminality, and blatant abuse of power in defying Congress in order to fund the wall, that make it so urgent for Congress to expand its impeachment investigation. It is the entire racist anti-immigrant agenda of which the wall is the most prominent symbol. Mwanevu writes:


"A president needn't commit a criminal offense to be impeached...The articles drafted and approved by the House against Andrew Johnson included the charge that he has besmirched his opponents in Congress and deployed overheated rhetoric in a series of speeches."

{See my comment about Johnson's impeachment, which included a charge based on his racist rhetoric against newly emancipated African-Americans) in the October 17 Immigration Daily.)

Mwanevu continues:

"Congress could use that latitude to indict Trump for his racism and immorality which underpins, among other policies, the administrations willingness to detain migrants - including children separated from their families - for the purpose of deterring immigration the United States."

See: The Right Way to Impeach Trump

https://newrepublic.com/article/155202/how-to-do-impeachment-democrats

Of course, an impeachment investigation of Trump's racist anti-immigrant agenda would need to go far beyond just looking into his detention human rights violations, appalling as they are. Trump's entire program of ethnic cleansing and exclusion of Asian, African, Latin American, Middle Eastern and other nonwhite immigrants, including his attempts to dismantle the entire legal immigration system in order to halt immigration from "shithole countries" and turn the system back to favoring only 1924-style "countries like Norway" immigration admissions should also be grounds for impeachment.

After waiting for far too long, Nancy Pelosi and the other Democratic Congressional leaders have finally found the courage to open an investigation for impeaching Donald Trump on narrow grounds which they believe to be the most politically expedient.

Will they find the courage that they need to go beyond expediency and broaden their inquiry to include a racist immigration agenda by the president that betrays America's deepest values of racial justice and equality and threatens the foundations of our democracy?

If the Democratic leaders cannot find the courage to impeach Donald Trump, not only for the Wall but for his entire anti-immigrant agenda, history might very possibly judge them to be complicit in what future generations (if there are any, but Trump;s global warming denial goes beyond the topic of this comment), may well regard as Trump's crimes, not only against brown immigrants, but against all of humanity.

As a postscript, Trump made some statements at an October 17 Dallas rally about America's disregard of the fighting in Syria which drew criticism as his having "absolutely no respect for human life." The same could well be said about his policies toward nonwhite immigrants, not only with regard to his brutal and sadistic detention policies, but to his overall agenda of keeping legal immigrants out of the United States unless they are from "Countries like Norway."

See, Common Dreams:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/18/absolutely-no-respect-human-life-trump-compares-turkish-assault-kurds-two-kids

Roger Algase
Atorney at Law