The federal government’s hypocrisy and cruelty toward undocumented immigrants in our state and throughout the country is on full display. Amidst the pandemic, the Trump administration has continued its war on migrants, deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Custom and Border Protection (CBP) to arrest, detain, and deport them.

In a recent op-ed in VTDigger, Vermont AFL-CIO President David Van Deusen argued against climate policies that hurt workers. Case in point is the proposed Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI) supported by Vermont Climate Solutions Caucus. TCI is a carbon cap and trade system that depends on a regressive fuel tax that will be passed down to workers at the pump.

While racism and xenophobia are nothing new, it is undeniable that we have seen a dramatic increase in their expression as hate crimes. Even so, it is a mistake to attribute the lion’s share to Trump. In fact, ICE terrorism of immigrant and particularly Latinx workers was a staple of the Obama administration, which deported more immigrant workers than any other previous administration in history–including more than every other administration of the 20th Century combined.