An editorial in the New York Times says: The homeland security secretary, John Kelly, issued a remarkable pair of memos on Tuesday. They are the battle plan for the “deportation force” President Trump promised in the campaign.
They are remarkable for how completely they turn sensible immigration policies upside down and backward. For how they seek to make the deportation machinery more extreme and frightening (and expensive), to the detriment of deeply held American values.
A quick flashback: The Obama administration recognized that millions of unauthorized immigrants, especially those with citizen children and strong ties to their communities and this country, deserved a chance to stay and get right with the law. It tried to focus on deporting dangerous criminals, national-security threats and recent border crossers.
Mr. Kelly has swept away those notions. He makes practically every deportable person a deportation priority. He wants everybody, starting with those who have been convicted of any crime, no matter how petty or old. Proportionality, discretion, the idea that some convictions are unjust, the principles behind criminal-justice reform — these concepts do not apply.
The targets now don’t even have to be criminals. They could simply have been accused of a crime (that is, still presumed “innocent”) or have done something that makes an immigration agent believe that they might possibly face charges. [Continue reading…]
He wants everybody out. The estimated number of “everybody” is eleven million. Suppose you want to “get them out” in one year. That means close to 31,000 per day!
In four years that is still close to 8000 per day!
Given these numbers it is absolutely certain that numerous randomly arrested illegal residents will be extradited.
Even if only 5000 per day for one year are extradited to Mexico that places an almost unbearable strain on Mexico’s economy which (with tongue in cheek) makes it even harder for that country to pay for Trump’s wall.
Here is an additional issue which could already involve the violation of international laws. Expelling Mexican and Canadian citizens is fairly simple. You bring them to the borders, tell them to walk across, and never to come back. However, more tangled issues may arise with Nicaraguans (example) and Europeans. They can almost certainly refuse to be extradited to Mexico or Canada unless it can be proven that these were the countries from which they entered our country. And Mexico has every right to refuse their entry which means they will be marooned at the border crossings or US Airports. That is not what you want the world to see from a smoothly running administration machine.
These arrests and extraditions already begin to look like another poorly thought-out affair. In other words a mess.
It suddenly appears to me what the Trump administration is trying to achieve. Remember “self deport”? Well, that is it. Perhaps it is better to leave voluntarily than to wait for the knock on the door.