It didn’t even take until Election Day for Donald Trump and his designated border czar, Tom Homan, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the president-elect’s first administration, to try to redefine mass deportations expected of undocumented immigrants. What Trump promised in his campaign would be the largest deportation in American history was already being recast as a rational and controlled process. Deporting people will be the
priority, the American public is told, but neither Trump nor Homan is clear whether they plan to focus on people accused or convicted of a crime, those guilty of driving with a broken taillight, or everyone living in the United States without legal immigration. or employment situation.
The Wall Street Journal, in a Nov. 11 opinion piece, noted Trump’s admission during a pre-election interview that the issue of the 11 million undocumented immigrants is “a complicated issue” that raises “human questions” about which “we must take heart, too. Homan promised CBS’s 60 Minutes that there will be no “mass sweeps of neighborhoods” or “concentration camps.” The program will involve “selective arrests” and “workplace enforcement operations,” he said.
What is clear is that the deportation plan is likely to end up the way Trump’s border wall program did: a media symbol intended to discourage illegal border crossings rather than a full-fledged action that approaches its stated objectives.
The oft-cited statistic about one in four U.S. construction workers being an immigrant almost always applies to commercial and residential construction, including single-family and multi-family homes built on poles, a separate industry sector that does not include large open shops or unions. infrastructure, commercial and institutional contractors and subcontractors. There’s no telling how many immigrant construction workers are undocumented, but they’re likely in the millions, and it’s clear that they’re a valuable contributor to what America builds.
We wonder how the staunchly anti-regulation Trump administration will carry out deportations without depleting the large labor supply that undocumented immigrants represent in many areas. Border security, an emblem of Trump’s first term, is a much better option than deportation and the random cruelties that come with it.
Future raids on workplaces, however, are bound to sweep away longtime U.S. residents who may be undocumented but also have steady work histories unconnected to drug trafficking or violent crime, families and deep roots in their communities.
We understand that the majority of American voters supported Trump this time and seem to agree with the deportations. But that doesn’t make these actions a bad idea, nor does it mean that Americans will continue to support them once all the facts are clear and the consequences are understood.
