When taken in conjunction with last week’s readings, this week’s reading by Ferré-Sadurní and Bensimon, I think highlight the potential disaster that could unfold in New York if Trump takes office and is able to implement his plan to leverage the police force to deport undocumented immigrants. he NYPD’s fiscal plan for 2024 is $5.8 billion, excluding benefits, pensions, debt service, and legal settlement costs, according to the New York City Council. Given the size and the resources of the NYPD, and the fact that the NYPD is much more highly coordinated compared to other police departments across the country, the concentration of the immigrant population, coupled with the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in New York may prove disastrous.

It was disheartening, but by no means unexpected, to see in the article by Goodman, Collins, Sandoval, and White that the busing of migrants from Texas to key democratic cities was a partisan political tactic, rather than one motivated by a genuine effort to alleviate the border crisis. Coupled with the complaints by Barry Bliss about tax dollars in the Ferré-Sadurní and Bensimon piece, it is clear that efforts to overcrowd key democratic cities could and perhaps already is shifting the entire stance of the country on immigration policy in a more xenophobic direction. Xenophobia, however, is not going to stop people from arriving at the border.

I also found it interesting that these policies very intentionally targeted certain diaspora that tend to settle in the South. For instance, Goodman, Collins, Sandoval, and White mention that most of the people on the buses from Texas were Venezuelan who, had they not been bused, would otherwise have settled in Florida and Texas.

It is truly unfortunate that instead of sending newly arrived migrants to states that are experiencing labor shortages, as the case of Denver highlighted, these migrants are given inaccurate information when they board the bus only to realize that these cities are already inundated with other migrants looking for jobs. For instance, I would imagine that if migrants were dispersed equally across the United States or to areas with actual labor shortages, I would imagine the short-term negative economic effects like decrease in wages or productivity highlighted by Kiernan could be mitigated. The cost of transporting people back and forth, as highlighted by Goodman, Collins, Sandoval, and White, also will come at great economic expense. Ultimately the people that lose out by this political game that is being played by states busing migrants to certain democratic cities are Americans.

Another broader journalism question I was thinking of while I was reading the article by Kiernan was how journalism can reshape people’s framing of issues related to immigration, particularly when those people’s minds have been shaped by what they are witnessing on the ground. For instance, you could write, as Kiernan does, about the net positive economic effects migrants will have in the long-term, but when those narratives are up against lived experiences of Bronx residents like Barry Bliss, long-term economic gain might not seem worth adopting a more tolerant attitude in the short-term because the gains aren’t as proximate or visible.