The World Is Getting the Message. It's Time Democrats Delivered it. It Really Is the Economy, Stupid.

Should Democrats talk about immigration or the economy? That's a false choice.

It turns out that abducting people off the street without a hearing and deporting them to a gulag in El Salvador, without recourse, is not a welcoming message to the millions of foreign tourists who used to come to America on vacation.

Neither is holding a Canadian woman for 12 days in cells she called “ice boxes” when she was only seeking to renew her work visa. Few Americans may know her story, but it was widely reported in Canada.

And then there were two German teenagers, who were detained, strip-searched, and subjected to full body scans before being deported after they arrived in Hawaii for a hiking vacation that turned into a nightmare. Again, few Americans may know their story, but it was widely reported in Germany and throughout Europe.

ICE is increasingly being viewed by would-be tourists as Trump’s American Gestapo — and the world is getting that message, even though too many Americans remain unaware of the consequences.

Democrats must tell them.

In the month of March alone, 900,000 fewer Canadians crossed the border into the United States than the number who visited our country in the same month last year — a nearly 25% decrease in the last month.

Visits from Mexico in March are down nearly 25%, as well. Central America? Down 24%. And visits from Europe were down 17% just last month.

Millions of people from around the world are canceling their vacation plans to see the Grand Canyon, see the Statue of Liberty, visit Niagara Falls, or roll some dice in Vegas. That’s billions of dollars in lost revenue for local restaurants, airlines, hotels, and other businesses that will be another drag on our economy beyond the damage already being done by the Trump regime’s tariffs.

And like those tariffs, it will be the American people who pay the price for those made-for-TV images of tattooed men with shaved heads being frog-marched into a gulag.

This is going to be devastating. Two industries that depend the most on the labor of immigrants are agriculture and construction. Food prices are going to go up, and forget about buying a house. The costs of lumber, steel, and copper — and therefore the cost of homebuilding — are going up under Trump’s tariffs, as are agricultural imports. Add to that the fact that immigrants who harvest our crops and work in construction are self-deporting, and that will also drive up costs on food and housing.

There is a strange argument going on within the Democratic Party about all this. Many believe we must fight the unconstitutional mass deportation tactics of the regime at all costs, and others who fear fighting Trump on immigration is a trap that plays into his “othering” narrative, and instead want to focus on the economy. Witness the coming “cost of living week of action” that U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) spoke about on Sunday.

The mistake is not realizing they are the same fight.

Bring the immigration fight to Trump on the economic costs to the American people. His economic policies combined with his immigration policies are delivering a one-two punch that is driving our economy down and the cost of living for all Americans up.

Trump’s regime threatens America’s economy and the world’s.

The rest of the world has gotten the message. It's time for a ferocious and determined opposition party to deliver it to the American people and grow the pro-democracy movement that will save the country and the world.

Stand up, America.

We are building a pro-democracy social network at Sez Us. I hope you will visit your app store and join the thousands who are building a pro-democracy information distribution hub to refuse and resist.