There cannot be many international crime leaders inspired by “The Princess Bride”, a cult children’s fantasy movie released in 1987. Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road, the very first dark-web drug-trading network, certainly was. When users signed up for the website, which went live in 2011, they were greeted by a message from the founder, “Dread Pirate Roberts”, the hero of the film, explaining how the site worked. Shielded by Tor, which hides website servers, and using bitcoin to make payments, users could order all manner of goods and services without revealing personal information.

The combination of the two technologies, Tor and cryptocurrency, allowed the creation of something like an Amazon Marketplace, only for illegal drugs. Users could anonymously order parcels to their homes, without ever having to encounter a scary drug-dealer in person. Dread Pirate Roberts was its delightful outlaw organiser. Until, of course, in 2013 the Silk Road was shut down by FBI agents and Mr Ulbricht, then 29 years old, was arrested in the science-fiction section of a San Francisco public library. In 2015, after a four-week trial, he was convicted of various offences and sentenced to life in federal prison. And that is where he sat until January 21st, when Donald Trump pardoned him.

“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponisation of government against me,” wrote Mr Trump on his social-media platform, Truth Social. The president, who has mused about executing drug-traffickers, said that two life sentences were a “ridiculous” punishment. He was also honest about his reason for the pardon. It was, he said, in honour of America’s libertarian movement, “which supported me so strongly”.

The pardon exemplifies Mr Trump’s brand of transactional politics. He originally promised to commute Mr Ulbricht’s sentence at the Libertarian Party’s national convention last May. In exchange, many of the party’s supporters voted tactically for Mr Trump over their own candidate in November. Promises made, promises kept. And yet the way in which Mr Ulbricht’s cause was taken up by libertarian voters is also revealing. As Dread Pirate Roberts, he represented a type of internet anarchism that has, with the rise of cryptocurrency, grown hugely influential.

Mr Ulbricht was caught because of a stupid mistake—he posted his own email address using an account he had used to promote the Silk Road. And yet in the case against him, prosecutors suggested he was also a violent criminal who had paid a hitman to take out an informer. What they did not reveal was that the supposed hitman was in fact a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Carl Mark Force IV, who was using his knowledge of the case to extort bitcoin from Mr Ulbricht. The informer and his murder were fake. Mr Force and another agent, Shaun Bridges, later pleaded guilty to corruption offences.

Mr Ulbricht’s supporters use this to argue that their man was unfairly punished. According to a commentary posted on the “Free Ross” website, which operates with the support of his family, Mr Ulbricht “is a peaceful first-time offender”. Or as Angela McArdle, the chairwoman of the Libertarian National Committee, put it after his release, Mr Ulbricht was a “political prisoner”, and “one of our own”. The Silk Road, she argued, was a libertarian project, all about “economic independence”.

That is a stretch. When Mr Ulbricht was arrested, the government seized 144,000 bitcoin he had accumulated in commission on drug trades, then worth around $30m (and rather more now). He may not have killed anyone, but Mr Ulbricht was arguably the first serious cryptocurrency criminal. The Silk Road was to organised crime a little like what Napster was to the music industry. Had he not been caught, Mr Ulbricht would plausibly be a billionaire by now.

Nowadays, not only are dark-web markets still thriving, but bitcoin is also used as a means of money-laundering for more offline drug-dealing. Ransomware, a type of extortion dominated by Russian crime groups, would be impossible without it. “Cryptocurrency is foundational to modern cybercrime,” says Jamie MacColl of the Royal United Services Institute, a British think-tank. In “The Princess Bride”, Dread Pirate Roberts is revealed to be more than one man. The moniker shifts from one pirate to another. Mr Ulbricht is free again. But he is no longer Dread Pirate Roberts; now they are everywhere. ■

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AN “INVASION”. That’s how Donald Trump describes migration across America’s southern border. “For American citizens, January 20th 2025 is Liberation Day,” he said in his inaugural address. The notion that America is being invaded is the defining theme of ten executive orders on immigration and border enforcement he signed on his first day in office. This is despite the fact that encounters at the border are the lowest they have been in four years. The orders fall into three categories: the rescission of Joe Biden’s policies and reinstatement of Mr Trump’s first-term plans; flashy things that sound tough; and extreme measures that range from probably illegal to flagrantly unconstitutional.

In the first group Mr Trump issued a sweeping order that aims to increase detention, coerce countries to take back their citizens, encourage local police to help with immigration enforcement and punish sanctuary cities, among other things. He resurrected Remain in Mexico, a policy he introduced in 2019 that forced migrants to wait on the other side of the border while their asylum claims were adjudicated.

He also shut down CBP One, an app set up by the Biden administration that helped migrants schedule appointments to apply for asylum. Migrants already in the queue found their meetings abruptly cancelled after Mr Trump took office. During his first term, the number of refugees relocated to America plummeted. This time he suspended all refugee resettlement for at least three months. Another order increases vetting for migrants and directs agencies to identify whether there are countries from which travel should be prohibited, perhaps a prelude to a ban like the one Mr Trump imposed on arrivals from mostly Muslim-majority countries in 2017.

Some orders sound harsh but may not change much. One that demands physical border barriers, detention and deportation is “just calling for enforcing laws that are already on the books”, says Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank. Additionally, Mr Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, which allows the defence secretary to send troops to help secure the frontier with Mexico. George W. Bush and Barack Obama did something similar. Federal law limits soldiers’ roles in domestic affairs to non-law-enforcement activities such as transport and logistical support, rather than actually arresting migrants. The national emergency also unlocks funds from the Department of Defence for the fortification of the border wall, a move the president made in 2019, too.

That leaves the most extreme orders. One aims to end birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment . The new president kickstarted the lengthy process of classifying drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations and directed top officials to prepare for the possibility that he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act, the only piece of the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in 1798 when America was feuding with France, that was not repealed or allowed to lapse. It permits the president to summarily detain and deport citizens of countries at war with America. Yet America is not at war, and drug gangs are not sovereign states, even if they do control some territory.

This is where Mr Trump’s talk of an “invasion” becomes more than rhetorical bombast. Framing the cartels as terrorists invading America is meant to legitimise his use of the law. And because America is being invaded, Mr Trump argues, he can block anyone from crossing the border. The courts may not see it that way.■

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IN HIS INAUGURATION speech Donald Trump promised that, in his administration, “we will not forget our constitution.” Before the day was over, Mr Trump had signed an executive order that, if implemented, would apparently end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the constitution. According to the plain text of the amendment, “all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” It doesn’t mean what it appears to mean, Mr Trump claims.

Under Mr Trump’s order, from next month the federal government will refuse to issue “documents recognising American citizenship” (presumably passports) to newborns unless they have a parent who is either a citizen or a permanent resident of the United States. Children born in America to unauthorised immigrants would thus be excluded. But so too would those of around 3m people living in America on exchange, work or student visas.

Relatively few rich countries automatically extend citizenship to everyone born on their territory (though Canada does, as do most countries in Latin America). America started doing so at the end of the civil war. The constitution was amended then to overturn the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which held that black people were not Americans. The 14th Amendment ensured that freed slaves and their children would henceforth be citizens.

The Trump administration’s argument is that the 14th Amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States”. Narrowly speaking, this is true. The American-born children of foreign diplomats, who have immunity from prosecution, have always been excluded from American citizenship, under the clause about jurisdiction. Until the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, so too were some native Americans. But Mr Trump seems to think the jurisdiction clause allows him to exclude far more people.

To justify this he draws on fringe thinking, which has gained adherents on the right since the early 1990s. Republican representatives in Congress have repeatedly introduced laws ending birthright citizenship, though none has got out of committee, notes Peter Spiro of Temple University in Philadelphia. The argument made is that when the framers of the amendment wrote “jurisdiction” what they in fact meant was “allegiance”. This “just looks reversed-engineered”, says Mr Spiro.

Since 1898, when United States v Wong Kim Ark was decided by the Supreme Court, American law and practice has held that birthright citizenship applies to the children of foreigners, says Alison LaCroix of the University of Chicago’s law school. In that case, an American-born child of Chinese migrants in San Francisco sued when he was refused re-entry to America. A president cannot overturn over a century of precedent about how to interpret a constitutional amendment with an executive order, says Ms LaCroix. Had it been applied in the 1960s Mr Trump’s rule would have stopped Kamala Harris from becoming a citizen.

Mr Trump’s order seems unlikely to survive legal challenges, even with a friendly Supreme Court. But even if it does, implementing it would be difficult. When applying for passports Americans have to submit only a birth certificate to prove their citizenship; these do not now record the citizenship or legal status of parents. Birth certificates are also issued by local governments, so that is unlikely to change soon, at least in Democratic states. To exclude foreigners’ children, everyone would have to provide documentation.

Ending birthright citizenship would also create some perverse outcomes. Although work visas and the like are nominally meant to be temporary, in reality, many people have them (legally) for decades, and start families during that time. In particular, because of a federal cap on the number of green cards available to citizens of any one country, people from India and China find it almost impossible to convert to permanent residency. Their children could now be excluded from citizenship, too. Indeed, it is unclear what legal status those children would have. In effect, some legal immigrants would give birth to undocumented “immigrants”.

The effect of ending birthright citizenship, combined with America’s current immigration law, would be to create a growing class of second-class residents—non-immigrants who can never become citizens. Fortunately, Mr Trump probably lacks the power to bring that about. ■

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