Even worse than you thought

The MAGA cesspool cheers ICE killings.

I tripped into a cesspool of MAGA comments about the deaths of innocent immigrants at the hands of ICE agents in Texas and Maine. I got there by way of a thread to a video posted by a Democratic senator expressing outrage at ICE’s killing spree.

Conclusion: Those still ensconced in the Trump cult support the regime’s racist purge and fully back ICE’s aggressive tactics. I expected that. What I didn’t expect were the sadistic expressions of glee over the recent killings.

“Deportation takes too long,” one person said with a smiley emoji, suggesting that street executions were a more efficient way of conducting Trump’s purge. Many mocked the senator for condemning the ICE killings, and many engaged in a morose math, arguing that the deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas, Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine and other immigrants should be balanced against the deaths of Americans killed by “illegal aliens.” Their comments suggested great satisfaction from the way ICE was evening the score.

Trump has tried for years to convince Americans that the nation is overrun with undocumented immigrants murdering, raping and robbing — committing most of the country’s crime. It’s a myth, but the MAGA I found in the social media cesspool obviously equate immigrants with criminality. There’s no room for nuance — Salgado had been in the U.S. for more than 30 years, Guerrero had a Social Security number — among ignorant men and women who celebrate the deaths of others.

I offer no other quotes, and no hyperlink to the cesspool. I want to spare you the experience I had — that is, seeing fellow Americans openly express sadistic thoughts, embracing a thug approach to deportation, a descent into savagery, like a cheering 21st Century lynch mob.

And their leader calls for more traffic stops and praises ICE for its “great work.”

This is the part the rest of us find so depressing — that too many Americans hold these deeply prejudiced, deeply cynical and even sick views, and continue to feed on toxic thoughts in the radical-right echo chamber.

But I believe their numbers have dwindled. The more aggressive Trump’s immigrant crackdown, the less the public approves of his handling of immigration. That’s been demonstrated in several polls. More Americans now see what the data show: Trump is engaged in a general immigrant purge rather than a targeted deportation of “the worst of the worst.” (When Trump took office in January 2025, fewer than a quarter of immigration arrests involved a person who had no criminal history. Nine months later, that number had risen to more than 60%. By January of this year, it had jumped to 80%. It is close to 90% now.)

Fact: Immigrants are far less likely to be arrested for crimes than native-born Americans.

I won’t be going back to the cesspool again. I’ve seen and heard enough. Better to be among the defiant and the resolute engaged in the big beautiful backlash, the majority of Americans who want to keep our democracy and build a better country — a nation that is strong and prosperous but also decent and humane.