Elected to serve as President of the United States from 2025 to 2029, a series of controversies have marked the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term. The measures he has implemented since taking office, though not entirely surprising as they were already part of his campaign, have sparked discussions in the realm of international politics. One of these measures, widely reported by both national and international media, is the so-called “mass deportation” of undocumented immigrants and those with irregular immigration status in the United States. Many of these individuals are being sent back to their countries of origin handcuffed and shackled, under the argument that they could potentially resist detention or cause disturbances, thereby endangering the physical integrity of deportation officers and the security of flights.
While deportation is a controversial measure, it is important to highlight that the modern state is sovereign in deciding what immigration policy it will adopt within its national territory. However, this policy must align with the international commitments the state has undertaken. In this regard, the Italian philosopher and essayist Donatella Di Cesare (2020) identifies a philosophical dilemma in contemporary liberal democracies: a political tension between the principle of state sovereignty and human rights. According to Di Cesare, the right to exclusion—meaning the ability to define who is a national, a citizen with rights, and who is a foreigner—is a defining feature of state sovereignty and one of the foundational elements of the modern state, and thus, of the international system in which we exist.
Therefore, the state border crossed by a migrant is not merely an imaginary line marking the end of one country and the beginning of another, but a complex space of disputes, encounters, possibilities, and limits. This represents a democratic paradox that operates under the logic of protecting the nation and its sense of belonging by discriminating against and excluding the “other”—the foreigner, the one who does not belong to the nation.
Since the mid-20th century, we have witnessed an increase in international migration flows, further intensified by the effects of globalization since the 1990s. Internal and international armed conflicts, environmental disasters—whether caused by human action or not—poverty, social inequalities, historical differences, lack of opportunities, and the search for better living conditions are among the main reasons why individuals choose to migrate to a country other than their own.
With the goal of ensuring safe and orderly migration while protecting the human rights of migrants, the United Nations (UN) has developed regulatory instruments, such as declarations and international treaties, that its member states must respect and that address this issue. However, although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted in 1948, states in Article 13 that every human being has the right to migrate, in practice, migration is often viewed as a problem for the international system and a potential threat to the nation-state. For this reason, many states have adopted increasingly restrictive immigration policies to contain or at least hinder these movements of people.
In general, restrictive international immigration policies are linked to a narrative and logic of “crisis,” which appears in certain political discourses and is reinforced by the media. This perspective frames migration as a major problem and blames migrants for the challenges faced by the receiving countries and societies. As a result, besides fueling xenophobic and racist rhetoric, the so-called “migration crisis” turns a human rights issue into a security issue. According to expert Carolina Moulin, this leads to what she calls a “policy of containing the excesses”, treating migrants as a necessary but never truly welcome workforce.
In this context, Trump’s policy of deporting people in unprecedented numbers, along with the indiscriminate use of handcuffs, chains, and other degrading treatment, is supposedly justified, as migrants are now being associated with all crimes and social welfare problems affecting the American population.
As a consequence, migrants undergo a process of criminalization, and when they are in an irregular situation, they are labeled as “illegal”—as if a human being could be considered illegal simply for existing, seeking, and building a new reality for themselves and their family. According to expert Donatella Di Cesare, “[…] seen as a crime in itself, immigration would be a source of criminality. […] The immigrant thus becomes a potential criminal, a stealthy outlaw, an implicit terrorist, a hidden enemy.”
The effects of this narrative, in turn, are not limited to undocumented migrants who lack the necessary papers but also impact documented migrants—those with regular immigration status—who are stigmatized in their daily lives. From a human rights perspective, what we are witnessing in the United States is, generally speaking, a significant regression in migration policies, highlighting the current collapse of Kantian liberal cosmopolitan hospitality.
*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.
Autor
PhD in International Relations from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and specialist in migration. Collaborating researcher at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), postdoctoral fellow of the Foundation for Support to Scientific Research of the State of São Paulo (FAPESP) and member of the MIGREF Study and Research Group.
