President Trump’s recent immigration measures — entry limits for nationals of 39 countries and the suspension of the diversity visa lottery — respond to several deadly shootings by imposing broad penalties on millions of people. Authorities have charged Rahmanullah Lakanwal and identified Claudio Neves Valente in separate attacks, but investigators say no wider conspiracies were involved. Research shows immigrants have lower incarceration rates than native‑born Americans, and dehumanizing rhetoric historically precedes collective punishment and mass violence.
Opinion: Trump’s Post‑Shooting Immigration Moves Amount to Collective Punishment
Collective punishment — penalizing an entire group for the acts of a few — is a tactic of bigotry with a long, tragic history. In the wake of several deadly shootings, President Donald Trump has adopted immigration measures that effectively impose broad penalties on millions of people who had no part in those crimes.
What happened: After a November attack near the White House that targeted two National Guard members, the administration announced new entry restrictions affecting people from 39 countries. Authorities have charged Afghan immigrant Rahmanullah Lakanwal with murder and related offenses in the incident that killed National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom and seriously injured Andrew Wolfe; Lakanwal has pleaded not guilty. In December, following a shooting at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine and the fatal shooting of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, the president suspended the diversity visa lottery, a program that can award up to 50,000 green cards annually to applicants from countries with low rates of U.S. immigration — many in Africa.
Authorities identified Portuguese immigrant Claudio Neves Valente as the shooter in the Brown and MIT attacks; he died of an apparent self‑inflicted gunshot wound on Dec. 18. Aside from Lakanwal and Valente, investigators do not believe others were involved.
Why This Is Problematic
Rather than focus on suspects or gaps in screening and enforcement, the administration’s response targets entire national and demographic groups. That approach is incoherent and dangerous: if birthplace alone made an entire population culpable, then the states where notorious offenders were born would somehow be collectively guilty. Lee Harvey Oswald was born in Louisiana; Timothy McVeigh was born in upstate New York. Collective punishment erodes core principles of individual responsibility and due process.
Evidence and Context
Research over many decades shows immigrants — both documented and undocumented — are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. A Cato Institute study published in September found that, for people born in 1990, native‑born Americans were roughly 267% more likely to be incarcerated by age 33 than immigrants. The Pew Research Center reports there are about 52 million immigrants in the U.S., including roughly 14 million who are unauthorized, and together they make up about 19% of the nation’s workforce.
The vast majority of immigrants come seeking opportunity, working hard and abiding by the law. Yet President Trump — whose own mother, paternal grandparents and two wives immigrated to the United States from Europe — has repeatedly stoked fears about nonwhite immigrants. He has singled out Somali migrants, once calling their admission into the U.S. akin to taking “garbage into our country,” and publicly denounced Representative Ilhan Omar, a U.S. citizen and legal Somali immigrant, calling her and her associates “garbage” and falsely asserting she was in the country illegally.
Language Matters
Dehumanizing rhetoric — comparing groups of people to garbage or vermin — has historically been used to justify stripping rights and imposing collective punishments, which can escalate to mass violence. Adolf Hitler’s dehumanizing language about Jews and the commodification of enslaved Africans in the United States are stark reminders of where such rhetoric can lead. When leaders cast whole groups as less than human, the door opens to atrocities.
Historical Precedent
Scapegoating and collective punishment are not new. Black Americans have long been targeted: in 1921, a false accusation against a Black man in Tulsa, Oklahoma, sparked a white mob that decimated a prosperous Black neighborhood, killing as many as 300 residents and destroying more than 1,000 homes and businesses in what became known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.
Policies that punish millions for the alleged crimes of a few undermine justice, fuel xenophobia, and endanger civil liberties. A responsible response to violent crime should focus on individual accountability, improved screening where warranted, and measures that protect public safety without scapegoating whole communities.
A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, a NewsNation contributor, former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party and a former New York state prosecutor.
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