Donald Trump is promising “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” As Texas Public Radio’s David Martin Davies reports, that history shows American mass deportations can go horribly wrong. During the recent Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, there were signs that read “Mass Deportation Now” and crowd chants of “Send them back.” This dovetailed with Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump’s promise for mass deportations.
But Sarah Cruz of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas warns if this is carried out – actual American citizens would likely be deported as well. “When we put that power into the hands of other agencies to enforce who don’t have the training, we could see U.S. Citizens falling under this mass deportations.” In the 1950’s the federal government Operation Wetback deported about a million people. And hundreds of thousands of American citizens were also ensnared. Cruz said this could happen again under Trump’s proposal.
As a report broadcast on Friday by NPR pointed out, Trump’s speech on the final night of the GOP convention left little doubt about the former President's message on illegal immigration and immigrants in particular. “They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions.” Yet research shows migrants are actually less likely to commit crime, largely because committing a crime would only draw unwanted attention toward them and their families. Specifically, in late May the non-profit Brennan Center for Justice says it is “debunking the myth of the migrant crime wave.”
Research conducted by the Center for Migration Studies of New York, based on figures provided by the U.S. Labor Department, estimates that the undocumented population represents 5% of the country’s workforce in industries such as agriculture, construction, service, entertainment and health-care. Mass deportation would likely exacerbate the severe workforce shortage in the U.S., and lead to a rise in the costs of goods and service.
According to research by the American Action Forum (AAF), Trump’s mass deportation plan would take at least 20 years to complete at a cost of $400 billion to $600 billion. To complete the task in two years “would require massive expansion in the federal government’s immigration enforcement” and cost far more. It could also mean the deployment of National Guard troops and even the military, along with the likely building of new detention camps, so-called “tent cities,” along the U.S. border.
