This is clearly an act of class war, of the ruling class creating another mechanism to beat the working class and poor into submission. By escalating the class war, making it more acute and then failing to respond to it within the official system - they are creating the exact conditions in which a real opposition will form. There’s “no real opposition” because historically we’ve had a slow-burning rightward lurch and less acute, more disparate class punishment mechanisms and avenues in the electoral system to slightly mitigate the suffering.

It may be a strategic error longterm for the ruling class to start escalating the class war outside the domain of politics into the cities and streets, or it might work out just fine for them. It’s still a large risk that they don’t really need to take for any particular reason other than scapegoating and their own reactionary grievances and bigotries and ignorance. They risk activating the apolitical working class and lumpen into civil unrest and eventual organization, when they could have just kept everything business as usual and just slowly arrested and deported people in a more restrained and orderly fashion like Obama.