Republicans are increasingly looking to everyday citizens to serve as watchful foot soldiers in their culture wars.
In a recent interview with NBC News, Tom Homan, who has been tapped to serve as the “border czar” for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, said he’s considering the use of a hotline that Americans could call to report allegedly undocumented immigrants who they think have committed crimes.
Homan also said the transition was considering a “fresh idea” about a hotline that would allow Americans to report undocumented immigrants who they believe have committed crimes in their communities. “I want a place where American citizens can call and report,” he said. “We need to take care of the American people. We need to make sure they have an outlet to help report child traffickers, forced labor traffickers. We want to give them an opportunity to be a part of the fix.”
This is a ridiculous idea for a number of reasons.
There are already several ways that people can report such crimes, including through local and state police, child protective services and FBI field offices. Aside from furthering stereotypes, there’s no demonstrable result from distinguishing alleged suspects according to their perceived immigration status. And then there’s the fact that everyday Americans are not immigration experts who are equipped to determine someone’s status, so there’s ample reason to believe that such a hotline could subject many Americans to bigoted profiling.
Homan’s hotline idea would essentially open the door to similar profiling by any idiot with a phone.
As an example, Oregon officials recently denounced a letter that circulated in a rural county, calling for residents to track and report “brown folks” suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. Homan’s hotline idea would essentially open the door to similar profiling by any idiot with a phone.
Writing for Prism last week, journalist Sarah Prager noted several “bounty laws” that conservatives have introduced across the country — attempts to reward Americans with cash for reporting others who are believed to have run afoul of conservative laws policing abortion, the bathrooms that trans people can use and the books available in school libraries. This is the stuff of Stalinism — as in, these initiatives resemble the “mutual surveillance” promoted during Joseph Stalin’s brutal Soviet regime, in which he called on Russians to be vigilant in reporting others to authorities.
And it’s also exposing hypocrisy in the conservative movement. On one hand, Republicans call themselves the party of limited government. On the other hand, they’re devising ways to expand an American police state, one citizen at a time.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.