Caitlin Dickerson

Labeling Somali immigrants as fraudsters almost seems like Trump's version of Ronald Reagan's welfare queen.

which is really convenient at a time when the country is realizing that this promise of only focusing immigration enforcement on hardened criminals isn't being kept, that far more people are being swept up by ICE than the public initially expected.

People are turning away from and are questioning this campaign.

And so if you can instead send this message that ICE,

suggests that most or all immigrants, maybe all Somali immigrants, maybe all African immigrants, maybe all immigrants in Minnesota, who knows, if you can suggest kind of vaguely that they may most or all be involved in some rampant fraud scheme that involves taking public dollars that are supposed to be going toward kids for their own personal use, it makes people a little bit more sympathetic toward the fact that this campaign doesn't look the way that they wanted it to or that they think they want it

You're right.

And there are other examples of the administration focusing on fraud.

I mean, accusing elected officials that they don't like of mortgage fraud, for example.

I think you're making a good point that fraud is rampant and who is pursued in a fraud investigation almost says more about who the investigator wants to target than the existence of the fraud itself, especially when you think about immigration.

So,

The Trump administration is looking at denaturalizing people, taking their citizenship away or preventing them from requesting asylum status based on a discrepancy between documents.

Just to walk people through the process, when you're applying for any form of legal status in the United States, you're filling out dozens and dozens of forms.

And

Some people do it with a lawyer.

A lot of people don't do it with a lawyer.

But any layman would be confused by some of these questions in these applications that are being filled out.

Sometimes the questions seem to conflict with one another.

You know, one document seems to be putting...

A request one way, another a different way.

And even people who are trying their best will end up with two documents that say two different things.