Two troubling weeks have passed since news broke of the Trump administration’s “major crackdown” on the homeless. Of course, these rumored plans are thin on details; as with other prior announcements, they may be a kind of horrific trial balloon, to determine how far the administration can go. But even in the weedy, vague statements released so far, familiar outlines emerge. In blaming people in California who are homeless for pollution and crime, and then calling for their removal, the president turns to a ready script, swapping one “crisis” for another. As the Senate moves to block President Trump’s national emergency declaration on immigration, homelessness may be his new border fight.

Early reports of some of the plans officials are discussing, including “options to clear” homeless camps, raise nearly as many questions—is such federal action even legal?—as fears. One senior administration official, speaking to The Washington Post, called the forcible relocation plan “the stupidest idea I have ever heard.” But as with the president’s immigration rhetoric, policy particulars hardly seem the point. What stands out, instead, is the invention of a new scapegoat, along with a new way to rail against the “elite” liberal cities who also give sanctuary to the undocumented.

Trump has already tried to link homeless people and immigrants. While on a flight to San Francisco this month, he told reporters that the homeless “came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents.” If he didn’t act, he said, cities would “destroy themselves.”

As with immigration, homelessness is a genuine humanitarian issue: real people facing real suffering. In 2018, more than half a million people experienced homelessness on an average night, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates. Nationwide, millions of people are living one paycheck away from such a crisis—and in some cities in California, with which Trump is uniquely fixated, between ten and 13 percent of homeless people are employed. But when Trump speaks of a homelessness “crisis,” he refers not to the conditions that create homelessness, like sub-living wages or the lack of affordable housing, nor to the experience of homelessness. He focuses, instead, on the harm homelessness allegedly causes others—him, his supporters, housed people who are confronted with homeless people’s existence.

Every sign points to this administration regarding homeless people, not homelessness, as the problem. During Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s visit to San Francisco last week, he inspired at least one member of his own staff to walk out on their meeting, by disparaging transgender women seeking shelter as “big, hairy men,” whom he said single-sex shelters should have the power to turn away. Later, Trump jetted into the state to raise money and throw his weight around. Upon leaving, he said the Environmental Protection Agency should fine San Francisco, alleging homeless people there caused “tremendous pollution.”