Donald Trump’s militaristic plan to deport as many as 20 million undocumented immigrants would tear families apart. likely costs hundreds of billions of dollars, damage the economyand cause all kinds of constitutional, humanitarian and logistical problems.
But ask Republican lawmakers and candidates about the specifics of what a “bloody story”, as the Republican presidential candidate himself acknowledged last month, and they are quickly shifting the subject or downplaying its implications, a sign of how eager they are to exploit their advantage on immigration issues against the Democrats without actually addressing the extremes of what their party has to offer. leader suggests.
“That’s a very large logistical undertaking,” Republican Sam Brown of Nevada said Thursday in a debate with Senator Jacky Rosen (D) when asked whether he supported the proposal.
“Where we need to start is securing the border,” Brown added, pointing to migrants with criminal records. “This is a huge undertaking, but it starts with securing that border.”
In the meantime, Rosen answered some relevant questions.
“How would that happen? Who would get caught in that? How many innocent people would be arrested?” she asked Thursday, pushing for passage of Republicans’ bipartisan border security bill blocked on Trump’s orders earlier this year. Brown let her questions pass without answers.
Trump’s advisers have provided that sufficient details about the plan, which includes the necessary construction of massive prison camps for immigrant families, part of an effort to deport millions of people at a record pace. The camps would be built “on open land in Texas, near the border” and would have the capacity to house as many as 70,000 people, which would double the country’s current immigrant detention capacity, says chief executive Stephen Miller on immigration in the Trump White House. House, said last year. They have also proposed using local police forces and the military to help carry out the deportations. The US Immigration Board estimates a mass deportation program would cost $1 trillion over ten years.
His campaign has also called on President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose administration infamously oversaw a massive deportation program, for “a brand new crackdown” on immigrants and “the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers and human traffickers in American history.” to describe.
During a campaign stop in Pennsylvania last week, Trump drew applause at a rally when he said he would “get these people out” and “deport them so quickly.” He has also used xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants, including saying that they “poison the blood‘ of America, but also falsely claim that this is so genetically predisposed to commit crimes. (Research has repeatedly shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.)
Trump’s calls for mass deportations and camps, his promise to use military force against a “enemy from within“, his threats against the independent news media and his glorification of violence have drawn comparisons to authoritarian regimes, including from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army General Mark Milley, who called Trump “fascist to the core.”
Among Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, the idea of rounding up 11 million undocumented immigrants in the largest deportation operation in the country’s history is being taken much less seriously. Republican senators said they were either unfamiliar with the plan or had crafted it in a way that sounded more politically acceptable.
“I don’t know much about it,” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told HuffPost last month.
“Let’s start with the worst,” added Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri. “Let’s deport previously convicted child molesters who are here. Let’s take it in pieces.”
When asked how Trump’s plan would work, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said, “You just start pulling in people who are here temporarily, like TPS, [and] telling them to go.”
The US is currently granting legal residency through the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program to people who have come to the country to escape crisis conditions in Ukraine, Venezuela, Syria, Myanmar, Yemen, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sudan and other countries. South Sudan. Trump has vowed to revoke TPS for the thousands of Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he has smeared and falsely accused of eating neighbors’ pets.
I don’t know much about it.Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
Meanwhile, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said Trump should emulate the increased level of deportations under the administration of President Barack Obama, who was criticized by immigrant rights groups for being the “chief deporter.”
“You look at what the Obama administration did and how it worked,” Cassidy said. “When you deported people, they sent the message: ‘Don’t spend your money going there because they’ll be deported right back.’ I suspect this is the essence of what Trump is talking about.”
Needless to say, Trump’s plan is significantly more involved than Obama’s deportations, which primarily targeted people with criminal records. Trump has not suggested he should focus only on those in the TPS program or on criminals, but has said any undocumented immigrant in the United States should be deported. At the Republican National Convention in July, his team handed out signs to delegates saying “Mass Deportation Now.”
But Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a critic of Trump, who hit because of his anti-immigrant rhetoric earlier this year, he sounded skeptical about his plan for mass deportations.
“What does it mean to round up large numbers of people who are here in this country illegally? What does that mean? I don’t know, and I’m not sure he knows either,” Murkowski told HuffPost.
Republicans have been pressuring Democrats for months on the immigration issue, which is trailing only the economy in the polls as Americans’ top issue. Significantly more American adults, compared to a year ago, would also like to see a reduction in immigration to the US Gallup. Other polls have shown this majority support for mass deportation, but public opinion is nuanced: A University of Maryland Survey A survey this month found that swing-state voters favored a path to citizenship once they learned the details of the mass deportation.
Most Democrats have also changed their rhetoric on the topic of immigration from previous years, pushing for more and stricter security measures at the border. Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, has done that touted its tough approach to crime, shredded She had taken progressive positions such as decriminalizing border crossings and even included Trump’s border wall in her presidential campaign ads, messages that seemed unthinkable during her 2020 presidential run in the crowded Democratic primaries.
“As a border prosecutor, she has taken on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling guns and drugs across the border. As vice president, she supported the toughest border control bill in decades,” a Harris campaign said advertisement in August.
Yet she has also attacked Trump over his deportation plan, asking participants at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute event last month to imagine the consequences.
‘How is that going to happen, massive raids? Huge detention camps?” she said. “What are they talking about?”
Other Democrats have used sharper language to warn of Trump’s intentions and their dire consequences for the country.
“You should know that he is deadly serious,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told HuffPost last month. “It would cause unrest not only for individual families and communities, but economically it would tear the country apart and crash our economy.”
“What’s different now is that it’s very clear that he’s against legal immigrants, not just undocumented immigrants,” he added about Trump’s attacks on Haitian immigrants in Ohio. “He targets people based on the color of their skin. There is no chance that he would be talking about Springfield if all these people came from the Netherlands.”
