Trump’s border crackdown reflects global authoritarian shift

Al Jazeera has published an article claiming that, the resurgence of extreme border policies under U.S. President Donald Trump is not an isolated event but part of a broader global trend towards authoritarian migration governance. Caliber.Az presents modified version of the material.

Successive governments in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have long exchanged and refined strategies of offshore detention and migrant criminalisation, reinforcing a system built on exclusion and deterrence.

On January 29, Trump signed an executive memorandum ordering an expansion of detention capacity at Guantánamo Bay’s Migrant Operations Center, planning for 30,000 beds to detain migrants deemed a “threat” to the U.S. The move coincided with a series of stringent anti-migrant measures, including the Laken Riley Act, which mandates detention for non-U.S. nationals arrested for minor crimes, disregarding due process.

While these policies signal a heightened authoritarian moment, they are not unique to Trump or the U.S. For decades, Australia and the UK have implemented similar strategies. Australia’s infamous Pacific Solution, launched in 2001, saw asylum seekers detained offshore on Nauru and Manus Island. Despite human rights violations, the model persisted and inspired British policymakers, who sought to replicate it with plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and, later, considered Italy’s offshoring model in Albania.

Even when political shifts occur, these policies endure. Australia ended its first Pacific Solution in 2007, only to revive it in 2012 under new leadership. When the Nauru detention centre was emptied in 2023, contracts remained intact, allowing for quick reactivation. In the UK, the Labour government under Keir Starmer scrapped the Rwanda plan but has not abandoned offshore detention altogether.

This infrastructure serves to exclude detainees from legal protections and isolates them from support networks. Simultaneously, onshore policies increasingly criminalise migrants through expanded definitions of deportable offences and closer cooperation between law enforcement and immigration agencies. The U.S. example of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act illustrates this shift, as it widened deportation criteria and militarised the U.S.-Mexico border. Today, Trump’s policies further this trajectory, portraying migrants as security threats and justifying their mass detention.

This carceral system intensifies during election cycles, with parties leveraging migration control as a demonstration of political strength. In recent elections in the UK, the U.S., and Australia, leaders across the political spectrum proposed harsher immigration restrictions, shifting the discourse further rightward.

Despite these escalating measures, research consistently shows that restrictive migration policies fail to deter asylum seekers but instead deepen harm. Immigration detention and deportation are not accidental failures but deliberate strategies designed to reinforce political control and financial gain. Yet, resistance persists. From the Manus Island protests in 2017 to grassroots coalitions in the U.S., migrant-led movements and advocacy groups continue to challenge these injustices.

As governments double down on punitive migration policies, it is these collective struggles that stand as the strongest opposition to an increasingly authoritarian global order.

By Aghakazim Guliyev