WASHINGTON—Early Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump was asked about the federal government delivering aid to the states in response to the COVID-19 crisis. He didn’t commit to anything, but contemplating such aid, he brought up one thing he thought he might demand in return.

“I think sanctuary cities are something — it has to be brought up, where people that are criminals are protected — they’re protected from prosecution,” Trump said. “I think it’s one of the problems that the states have. I don’t even think they know they have a problem, but they have a big problem with it — the sanctuary city situation.”

At a glance, this seems a weird thing for Trump to hone in on. Specific cities’ policies toward delivering services to undocumented immigrants may not seem to have much to do with the financial burdens of massive statewide economy shutdowns and public health-care costs in a pandemic.

But from the beginning of his presidential career, Trump has defined himself by his opposition to immigration. As a candidate, his supporters chanted “Build that wall!” In his first days in office, he fought over orders to ban many Muslims from entering the country. He tightened restrictions on visas even for skilled workers and foreign students.

And the coronavirus crisis has not distracted him from that obsession with shuttering borders and choking off immigration — if anything, it has sharpened his focus on it. His very first big speech to the public on the virus, delivered from the oval office directly to the American public, focused on shutting borders to travellers from other countries. The provision in the North American border agreements that raised the most eyebrows in Canada was the suspension of Safe Third Country Act provisions about refugees.

Trump’s most recent high-profile announcement, signed April 22, was a sweeping suspension of most legal immigration for at least the next 60 days.

All of these have been justified as efforts to stop the spread of the pandemic. But like Trump’s suggestion of tying financial help to states’ toleration of sanctuary-city policies, these measures mostly seem like grindstones on which he can sharpen his anti-immigration axe.

Trump’s adviser and speech writer Stephen Miller has long been known as a xenophobic obsessive labouring behind the scenes to steer Trump’s immigration agenda. (“This is all I care about. I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life,” Miller is reported to have once told an administration meeting where he pushed hard against refugees, according to the New Yorker.)

Last week Miller told White House supporters on a phone call that Trump’s coronavirus immigration measures were a longer-term effort to “turn off the faucet” of immigrant labour permanently, according to the Washington Post.

As the Post reporters note, the formal name of the president’s executive order makes plain that the rationale behind the suspension of immigration has less to do with the spread of the disease than with the assumed economics of the job market: “Proclamation Suspending Entry of Immigrants Who Present Risk to the U.S. Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the COVID-19 Outbreak.” (Some experts argue that limiting immigration is more likely to hurt the U.S. economy than help it, though Trump and his supporters don’t agree.)

Normally, Trump’s emphasis on limiting immigration is opposed by a vast majority of public opinion in the U.S. In 2019, Gallup found that 35 per cent of poll respondents wanted to decrease the level of immigration, versus almost two-thirds who wanted to keep it at current levels or increase it.

But today the coronavirus crisis has created an opportunity. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released Tuesday showed that 65 per cent of Americans support Trump’s temporary ban on immigration during the coronavirus outbreak — the measure drew majority support even from groups normally very supportive of immigration, including people of colour, women, and youth.

His presidential career so far has shown Trump doesn’t need an excuse to turn virtually every topic into a way to restrict immigration. Even when those policies were generally unpopular, he defined himself by them. The coronavirus has not only provided further focus for him, as a justification to implement stricter measures, but it has delivered popular support for those measures in an election year. In that way, at least, this is a good crisis for Trump — one he’s shown he won’t let go to waste.

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