IN APRIL Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), lamented that it takes too long to deport illegal immigrants. At the Border Security Expo in Phoenix he told a crowd of startup bosses vying for government contracts that a better deportation system would function more like Amazon, the tech giant whose delivery drivers zigzag the country at record speed. “Like Prime, but with human beings,” he said.

A few steps past torn and twisted steel beams from the destroyed World Trade Centre, the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, Texas, projects clips of Mr Bush speaking in the days after the attacks of September 11th 2001. In different settings he is by turns sorrowful, fierce and resolute, yet the video shows he also struck another note, not just of tolerance but of goodwill towards people some Americans might immediately suspect as enemies. Six days after the attacks Mr Bush spoke at a mosque, the Islamic Centre of Washington, DC. “These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith,” he informed the country. Islam, he said, “is peace”.