Donald Trump has ridden the xenophobic political tiger into the White House once again, convincing Americans that immigrants in this country are an existential threat to our safety and the wellbeing of the nation.
It’s a politically effective trope that in practice diverts attention and, critically, resources from the very real threat posed by white supremacists and far right violence.
“This is a problem that infects all our society,” says Mike German, a former FBI agent who spent years undercover working to expose far right and white supremacist groups operating within law enforcement. “It is not a matter that pops up once in a while. It is a constant problem.”
German spoke during a Jan. 28 virtual briefing highlighting the publication of his new book, Policing White Supremacy, hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice in New York where German is a researcher.
Despite Trump’s continued lambasting of migrants as criminals, rapists and thieves—descriptions used to justify his campaign of mass deportations—data show that as a group, immigrants, legal or otherwise, commit far fewer crimes than American born citizens, and in fact may have an overall mitigating effect on crime.
Violence and terrorism committed by adherents of white supremacist and far right ideologies, on the other hand, have been rising steadily over the past decade, surpassing threats posed by Islamist extremists and other ideologically motivated groups, jeopardizing public safety and even the foundations of our democracy.
And, says German, the pervasiveness of white supremacist and far right ideologies within local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the agency he once worked for, makes this threat all the more pernicious.
The starkest example of that threat is the January 6, 2020, attack on the US Capitol.
“Many people were shocked when so many police were involved,” notes German. “But there were military officials, and elected representatives also involved,” he said, a sign of just how widespread these ideas have become within agencies and offices ostensibly in charge of protecting the public.
One of Trump’s first actions in office was to pardon participants in the January 6 assault, a move German says is an “an acknowledgement that he is not on law enforcement’s side.” Some 174 police officers were injured and one later died following the attack.
By not confronting the reality that officers within their ranks belong to groups that openly espouse racial or religious hatred and anti-state views, law enforcement is “putting their own officers at risk,” German says. “It is more dangerous for a cop to report racist conduct than for a cop to do racism.”
An investigation by Reuters in 2022 painted an alarming portrait of “white supremacist infiltration within law enforcement,” as well as ties between officers and instructors, with extremist groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, both of which are linked to the events of Jan. 6.
German traces a through line from the creation of the Department of Justice in 1870 specifically intended to target racist violence perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan to the emergence of Jim Crow laws designed to uphold white supremacy.
“People tend to forget that US law enforcement systems built at this time were meant to enforce white supremacy,” he says. “This is why it is so persistent in policing today.”
It also explains why important signals warning of possible violence on Jan. 6 were missed or ignored by law enforcement. “For a long time, the FBI had not prioritized investigations of far-right violence. They focused on anarchists, anti-fascists, and even environmentalists. Groups that were far less violent,” says German.
Neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security collect data on acts of domestic terrorism committed by white supremacists and the far right, he adds, often ascribing them to “lone wolves” rather than acknowledging “what is a more networked movement.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is continuing with its sweeping campaign of mass deportations, apprehending more than 3,500 individuals over the past week—more than half of whom have no criminal record, according to reports—and promising to send detainees to the US military prison at Guantanamo.
In a virtual briefing with reporters, Karen Tumlin, director of the non-profit Justice Action Center, which advocates on behalf of immigrant rights, accused Trump of “promoting white supremacy,” adding that solidarity within and between communities was key to pushing back on his agenda.
German agrees. “Part of the strategy of these groups is to divide communities. We need to build social cohesion,” he says, adding that the risks they pose are not limited to liberal circles.
“You can’t predict who this violence will target,” he says. “It didn’t surprise me at all that the young man who tried to assassinate Trump was communicating in these chat rooms expressing the same antisemitic and anti-immigrant rhetoric that the administration promotes,” notes German, pointing to the attempt made on Trump’s life during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.
“Just as people on January 6 wearing blue lives matter patches attacked police, it’s a very dangerous thing to give a green light to political violence because it will be very difficult to identify who it will hurt.”
