Opinion: Trump’s wall, and other ways he’s harming America

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, The Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, Jan. 28, 2016. Only one week into the Trump presidency, less of California is officially in a drought. Coincidence?

Let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.

Last May, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to “open up the water” for California, which isn’t the only campaign pledge he’s fulfilling during his first week in the White House. In the nine days since President’s Trump’s inauguration, refugees were declared unwelcome in the United States, shelved pipelines for shunting climate-change causing crude across the American landscape got the green light, our country’s longstanding amicable relationship with Mexico was effectively canceled, and cities that dare to focus on local priorities instead of immigration law had crucial federal funding put into jeopardy.

But for all we’ve lost over the last week — our global reputation for compassion, any hope for the climate and immigrants not forced to live in the shadows — Trump wants to give us something big and expensive: a 2,000-mile-long wall on our border with Mexico. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, says The Times’ editorial board:

What’s the point of the wall, anyway? Illegal immigration from Mexico dropped off during the last recession; in fact, the Pew Research Center reported in 2015 that more Mexicans were leaving the U.S. than were coming in. Detentions of people illegally crossing of the Mexican border have plummeted since the recession too. More and more, residents who are living in the U.S. illegally came into the country with visas, often from nations other than Mexico, but then didn’t leave. The wall will have no effect on people who come in that way, obviously. And while drug trafficking across the border is significant, history shows that blocking off one smuggling route just creates another as long as the demand remains strong. Mexican cartels have already made inroads deep into the U.S., an infiltration not likely to be affected by a wall.

Border security is important, and the U.S. doesn’t do a good enough job at it, but changes should be a key part of a broader comprehensive reform. Instead, Trump is starting with a disruption, not a solution. He might be able to start building his wall, but the resistance he will face — beginning with California — means in all likelihood it will get delayed by lawsuits challenging everything from the seizure of private property along the wall’s route to the environmental effects of such a massive intrusion into sensitive habitats.

Trump also Wednesday ordered a crackdown on those already living here illegally. He directed that 5,000 new agents be hired for the Border Patrol and 10,000 for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to track down potential deportees in the interior. He ordered that new detention centers be built near the border, and already overwhelmed immigration judges be sent to detention centers to handle cases there rather than in immigration courts. And he revived the controversial Secure Communities deportation program with the threat of defunding jurisdictions — such as San Francisco and, potentially, Los Angeles — that do not cooperate fully with federal immigration enforcement.

These are draconian steps that, taken together, will convert the border into a fortress, tear apart families and communities and harm sections of the economy that have come to depend on undocumented labor. And they would do little to make the nation safer, Trump’s purported goal.

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Here’s your border wall, America. And here’s the bill. Congratulations, American consumers: If Trump has his way, you’ll pay more for everyday items such as food to fund construction of the border wall. Of course, the Trump administration spins its proposed 20% tax on items imported from any country with which the U.S. has a trade deficit (including Mexico) differently, but as Jon Healey explains, Joe and Jane Q. Shopper will likely end up paying the bill. L.A. Times

It isn’t just the coastal elites who are offended by Trump’s presidency. Melissa Batchelor Warnke, a contributing writer to Opinion, spotlights Reno — which bills itself as “the biggest little city in the world” and isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of left-wing political activism — to show why last Saturday’s massive Women’s March didn’t just take hold in places such as Washington and Los Angeles. “Reno’s march was indigenous-led, and organized by activists of many races, religions, sexual orientations, abilities and gender expressions,” she writes. “White women stepped back during the day’s events and highlighted the long-standing advocacy work of communities of color.” L.A. Times

California pols are speaking of resistance to Trump — but not Eric Garcetti. In a National Public Radio interview, the mayor vowed to “fight on and fight hard” for Los Angeles’ values, but he also promised to work with the president on infrastructure and the city’s bid for the 2024 Olympics: “It is the responsibility, I think, of anybody in elected office to look for opportunities to help serve their people. And we have to think less about who is the most powerful person in this country and think more about who’s the most vulnerable. And where I can find those opportunities with anybody, including our new president, I will do that.” NPR

Under Bush, liberals were “nuanced.” Under Trump, they’re absolutists. Charlotte Allen recalls when leftists recoiled at the 43rd president’s denunciation of “evil” regimes and calls out today’s pundits for using the e-word to insult Trump. Allen writes, “Strange, isn’t it, that when the tables are turned, the liberal pushers of moral ambiguity are as absolutist as any fundamentalist preacher associated with George W. Bush?” L.A. Times

And you thought doomsday preppers inhabited only flyover country. Some of Silicon Valley’s brightest and wealthiest aren’t willing to bet on the survival of civil society as we know it, so they’re doing what any paranoid guy with a bounteous bank account would do: Buying enough supplies and land to be able to ride out the apocalypse, and to do it comfortably. Writes one tech survivalist: “I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and I have an underground bunker with an air-filtration system. … A lot of my friends do the guns and the motorcycles and the gold coins. That’s not too rare anymore.” New Yorker

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com