My ne’er-do-well neighbor Swamp Rabbit was annoyed. “Give it a rest, Odd Man. You just wrote about the disappearing immigrants last week. Get off your soapbox for a while.”

We were discussing an article about the MAGA mindset on immigration. About the Trump gang’s crusade to jail undocumented immigrants then toss them out of the country. About the myth that immigrants are stealing American jobs rather than taking jobs that most native-born Americans don’t want, especially in rural states.

“North Dakota has two job openings for every unemployed worker,” I said. “It would make a lot more sense to let immigrants have those jobs instead of sending them to some gulag in El Salvador.”

Swamp Rabbit stroked his feeble goatee. “I guess so, but there’s a reason them jobs don’t get filled. Nobody wants to freeze their ass off in the middle of nowhere for ten dollars an hour.”

It’s not just the Dakotas, I told him. Immigrants are being “disappeared” from Kentucky and West Virginia and other rural states that voted for Trump. Idaho, for example, where a state senator’s extreme anti-immigration stance…

“Forget them red states,” Swamp Rabbit said, interrupting my rant. “If you gotta complain, stick to what’s happenin’ right here in Philly.”

He referred me to another article, this one about an immigrant from Guinea who recently was snatched up and jailed by ICE. The man had lived in Philadelphia for 20 years, working steadily to support his family, after being granted Withholding of Removal status, which protects undocumented immigrants likely to suffer persecution if returned to their home countries. But there’s a catch — an immigrant granted withholding status can be locked up at any point if ICE decides to try to deport him to a third country.

“They’re using police state tactics,” I said, stating the obvious.

Swamp Rabbit chuckled. “ICE agents don’t care about police states. They care about meeting their arrest quotas to keep their fascist bosses happy.”

Footnote: In regard to the current war on immigrants — The two million or so Irish immigrants who arrived in America in the immediate aftermath of the potato famine (1845) were ostracized and persecuted by nativist “Know Nothings” (a.k.a. the American Party), who were like an early version of MAGA Republicans. But the Irish continued to come here throughout the rest of the 19th century and ultimately thrived.