Over the past few weeks, Georgia’s immigrant communities have been on edge. Recent arrests by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have proliferated throughout the state, with raids in Atlanta, Savannah and Cartersville among others. While community members have staged vocal opposition, with protests in neighborhoods like Buford Highway, the raids have continued. With President Donald Trump enacting a flurry of hardline border policies during his first weeks in office, such as resurrecting the Migrant Protection Protocols, otherwise known as the “Remain in Mexico” program, and shutting down the Customs and Border Patrol One app, the nation’s defining pluralism — the core of American identity — is under siege. Founded on the ideals of liberty, opportunity and equality, the United States has long drawn strength from its multiplicity of cultures, religions and backgrounds. Trump's policies signal a rejection of that pluralism in favor of a narrowed, exclusionary vision — one that seeks to impose a homogenous identity at the expense of America’s rich diversity.
The Trump administration is hurtling toward a new age of American homogeneity of identity, culture, race, ethnicity and country of origin. This desire for homogeneity encapsulates the cultural and political trajectory of Trump’s second term and the nationalist influences at his ear. This vision encourages an America scrubbed clean of its pluralistic essence — a place where dissent is silenced, diversity initiatives are dismantled and undesirable immigrants are expelled en masse to meet ICE’s new arrest quotas. This national reimagining dulls the rich multidimensional diversity of the identities that define the United States, reducing this country to a monochromatic portrait of fear and exclusion. Through executive orders, legislative priorities and cultural shifts amplified by right-wing media, Trump has ushered in a chilling ICE age that turns diversity into a target and conformity into a virtue.
Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration marks the beginning of a movement to redefine American identity – and exclude swaths of immigrants within it. Signed just days into his second term, the draconian Laken Riley Act mandates the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants charged with crimes, without due process. The Act was spurred by the killing of Riley – a nursing student at Augusta University (Ga.) – on the University of Georgia campus in February 2024. The murderer, an undocumented Venezuelan migrant, was sentenced to life in prison in November 2024. Republicans, including Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), herald the new law as a victory to “restore law and order,” but the act’s underlying message is clear: The United States is no longer a refuge for those seeking security and sanctuary — instead, it is a fortress where only a select few are welcome. Republicans who insist that immigrants are inherently violent blithely ignore the fact that crimes — like the Riley case — are horrific but infrequent, with unauthorized immigrants committing crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born citizens.
Trump’s current efforts to repeal birthright citizenship further compound immigration tensions, overturning 156 years of constitutional precedent. His executive order, which a federal judge has already blocked, takes direct aim at the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all individuals born on U.S. soil. If this motion is successful, Trump would singlehandedly uproot a bedrock principle of the nation’s identity. Under Trump’s framing, children born to both undocumented immigrants and immigrants who are now permanent residents are seen as threats to the nation’s demographic composition, reducing them to pawns in a xenophobic “great replacement” conspiracy theory. This policy does not just rewrite the Constitution — it rewrites what it means to be American.
While Trump’s immigration policies dominate headlines, Democrats bear their own share of responsibility for the erosion of pluralism. In their scramble to compete with Republican narratives, many Democrats have abandoned their progressive stances on immigration, an ideological shift that The Emory Wheel’s Editorial Board has previously reflected on. Under former President Joe Biden’s administration, for example, deportation numbers quietly rose to as high as 142,000 in Dec. 2023. While they were once the party of “family reunification,” supporting pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants through the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, Democrats now find themselves complicit in the erasure of the United States’’ immigrant roots.
The ongoing rhetoric surrounding the H-1B program, a temporary visa program for nonimmigrant professional workers, which was once hailed as a necessary mechanism to address labor shortages in specialized fields by encouraging foreign workers to immigrate to the United States, further exemplifies this trend. Now, the H-1B program has become another battleground for the broader debate regarding immigrants’ role in the United States. The Republican Party remains divided on the issue, with some tech industry giants such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy defending the program and other nationalist extremists calling for bans on any immigration across the U.S. border.
Additionally, Trump’s back-and-forth stance on H-1B visas underscores the tension within his broader vision of the United States, as well as his political inconsistencies. In 2020, at the beginning of his first term, Trump temporarily halted the H-1B programme . For Trump, this program is not just about economic needs; it is about consolidating a vision of a more homogeneous America, one where immigration serves a narrow, utilitarian purpose rather than one where it enriches the nation with diverse perspectives and talents. As such, Trump’s previous support of H-1B restrictions symbolizes a broader ideological shift toward an exclusionary United States in which immigrants are valued not for their contributions to culture, innovation or society at large, but solely for their economic utility.
Young people have a role in holding both the Republican and the Democratic parties accountable for the mental, emotional and physical toll Trump has wrought against immigrant communities since the beginning of his second term. As a community bound together by diversity, Emory University students have a responsibility to get involved, whether it be through Emory Behind the Glass, a student organization that advocates for detainees at the Stewart Detention Center, or volunteering for Atlanta nonprofits like New American Pathways. One month has passed under the new administration, and it is clear that the United States is changing. Immigrants seeking refuge and a fresh start on American soil always have — and always will — play a crucial role in the fabric of our nation. They are our neighbors and our coworkers. Moreso, American culture is not homogenous — it is a conglomeration of different languages, different customs and different people. However, it is our job, as students and as Americans, to ensure that our national values do not fall to the xenophobic rhetoric – and the overreaching executive efforts – permeating our politics and the streets of our communities.
