Republicans Will Regret Calling for Mass Deportations [View all]

[Bundbuster]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/republicans-will-regret-calling-for-mass-deportations.html

Allegedly in response to a massive new influx of migrants (mostly from Central and South America) that at least temporarily overwhelmed the system for processing them, Trump has further radicalized his immigration pitch in his 2024 campaign. Aside from adopting the wild, baseless conspiracy theory that Democrats are eagerly encouraging migrants to to come to the country in order to vote illegally, Trump has gone from focusing on border security to promising to (as his Agenda 47 platform puts it) CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY — a pledge that is repeated word for word in the Republican Party platform for 2024. This new positioning reflects both the greatly increased salience of immigration as a weapon with which to bludgeon the Biden administration (and now Harris), as well as the radicalization of Trump’s own followers. An intense focus of MAGA folk on crimes allegedly committed by migrants has been an increasingly common feature of Trump campaign and party communications.

Still, for those of us accustomed to thinking of the idea of rounding up and deporting immigrants as an essentially un-American proposition, it was startling to see the pre-printed “Mass Deportation Now!” signs at the Republican National Convention last month, the only issue-focused sign widely in evidence there. Do Republicans know what they are doing? Have they just gotten carried away with their rhetoric?

It’s clear that for the moment at least, there’s a lot more public support for radical steps on immigration than we’ve seen in many decades. But for the most part, it appears deportation fever is limited to Republicans and conservatives. An April Pew survey found that only 37 percent of Americans, but 63 percent of Trump supporters, favored “a national effort to deport” undocumented immigrants. A June CBS/YouGov survey showed significantly higher support for a deportation program, with even a majority of Latino registered voters approving of the the idea. But it’s significant that once pollsters mention the mechanics of expelling many millions of people, support goes down significantly.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg in terms of controversy. Identifying undocumented immigrants before separating them from their families and herding them into camps would mean massive deployment of law enforcement to conduct sweeps of “suspected” neighborhoods and interdiction of “suspected” illegals on a scale never before imagined. Remember the furor that accompanied Arizona’s 2010 “show your papers” law that essentially legalized racial and ethnic profiling by traffic cops and police personnel until it was partially struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court? That would be replicated on a vast, national basis by any effective mass deportation regime, as I am sure Democrats and immigration advocates will be regularly reminding Latino voters between now and Election Day.