A political debate tactic is to pretend a disliked policy or cause is not what it seems to be but is really something else. President Donald Trump’s deportations of illegal immigrants are, for example, alleged to be about suppressing minority turnout in the next congressional election rather than about expelling people who shouldn’t be here.

This technique is useful when the thing itself is hard to dispute. It’s difficult to say people with no right to be in America shouldn’t be made to leave. So argue that their expulsion is an antidemocratic trick to make left-of-center voters too afraid to turn up at polling places to cast their ballots.