Barely a week into his first term as president in 2017, Donald Trump found inspiration in an unlikely moment: a combative phone call he held with one of America’s closest allies. In his first-ever conversation as president with Australia’s then-prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Trump berated the Aussie leader over a deal struck with the Obama administration for the U.S. to resettle refugees who had tried to start lives Down Under but were now being held by the Australians in detention centers in Papua New Guinea and the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru.
Trump has finally implemented some of the most draconian aspects of the controversial Australian immigration system.
When Trump asked Turnbull why Australia was refusing to accept the refugees, the prime minister explained it was due to the country’s efforts to thwart people-smuggling by blacklisting anyone who had tried to make the deadly journey via boat — the policy version of being cruel to be kind. “That is a good idea. We should do that too,” Trump responded, per a transcript of the call that later leaked to The Washington Post. “You are worse than I am.”
Some eight years later, and with a firmer grip on power than ever before, Trump has indeed finally implemented some of the most draconian aspects of the controversial Australian immigration system that seemingly preoccupied his thinking for much of his first term.
Like the Aussies, he’s embraced a policy of indefinite offshore detention, sending migrants to El Salvador and Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. He, too, has sanctioned the construction of inhumane holding centers with torturous conditions in sweltering locations. And his policies have drawn concern and condemnation from advocacy groups and international organizations — just like Australia’s.
But there is one clear difference. For all the cruelty and suffering inherent in the Australian system (and there has been much), successive governments of varying political stripes have generally sought to shield Australian citizens from its harsh reality, barring most media and criminalizing whistleblowers. Officials also rarely like to discuss the conditions in these camps, even as they proclaim their success in dramatically reducing the number of migrant boat arrivals.
Out of sight, out of mind — or so the thinking appears to be about a system that still enjoys some voter support, yet is also something of a quiet national shame.
In Trump’s America, though, the system’s cruelty is on full, gleeful display. It is not only advertised, but heralded. Here, it’s no longer just about deterrence for a select foreign audience, as the Australians have long insisted; it’s now also about entertainment for a domestic one.
Trump’s administration and allies have openly promoted and reveled in the harsh treatment he has meted out as part of his immigration crackdown.
The garbage fire that is the White House X account routinely shares memes mocking those being detained or deported, with trolling posts that riff on ASMR videos or Hayao Miyazaki movies. Other administration social media posts about immigration arrests — described as “fun videos” by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt — have been set to the music of Vanilla Ice and Kanye West.
Republican lawmakers and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have traveled to the Salvadoran megaprison housing deported immigrants to pose for photos with a thumbs-up or, in Noem’s case, with her hair perfectly curled and sporting a $50,000 Rolex watch. The Republican Party of Florida is selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise, for goodness’ sake. When Trump toured that makeshift detention facility in the Everglades earlier this month (accompanied by a media entourage, of course), he openly joked about the dangerous location of the site. The Guardian dubbed his visit “calculated celebration of the dystopian.”
If Team Trump’s sadistic public posturing on immigration enforcement is proving to be bad politics, who exactly is it for?
The U.S. is not the only country that has drawn inspiration from Australia’s system (which was itself modeled on the American detention of Haitian asylum-seekers in Guantanamo Bay in the 1980s and ’90s). The United Kingdom began trying to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda in 2022 — a Conservative Party policy later killed off by Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
But the U.S. is the only country to take such manifest delight in its horrors. Polling shows the Trump administration’s draconian immigration crackdown is turning off most voters. The percentage of Americans who believe Trump has gone too far with his efforts to deport undocumented people has risen 10 points since February, to 55%, per the latest CNN polling. Some 58% of people also disapprove of the way his administration is using detention facilities, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll, which found a slight majority of Americans now also disapprove of Trump’s deportation program in its entirety. Perhaps Trump’s zeal is starting to make waves Down Under, too. With Australians holding some of the most negative views about Trump among any of the world’s voters, a survey commissioned by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre ahead of the country’s May election showed many voters supporting a more compassionate treatment of asylum-seekers and fewer voters in favor of offshore processing than a decade ago. So if Team Trump’s sadistic public posturing on immigration enforcement is proving to be bad politics, who exactly is it for? Well, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, for one, who has long seemed to bask in despising immigrants, and is now the chief architect of the deportation program. But it’s also for the hardcore MAGA faithful who have been primed by Trump’s movement to rejoice in the suffering of perceived foes, be it liberal tears, laid-off bureaucrats or undocumented migrants. For anyone with a shred of humanity, though, the administration’s repackaging of immigration enforcement and human suffering as entertainment is not just a spectacle; it’s a horror show.
David Mack
David Mack is an Australian-born journalist and writer who has lived in the United States since 2014. Previously an employee of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and BuzzFeed News, his work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Slate. 
