Trump and Deportations

 

Some of what Trumpists have been saying about immigration is true. The number of illegal aliens in the country was much larger at the end of Biden’s administration than at its beginning. Unlimited immigration of poor people into a welfare state increases the burden on those being taxed to support that state. People in the Biden administration opened the southern border intentionally, probably at least partly because Democrat politicians have long term political incentives to increase the size of the government-dependent economic underclass. The open border made it easier for criminals, gangsters, and suspected terrorists to enter the country, and some of them did. Preventing almost all future illegal immigration is a good idea.

None of this justifies the things Trump’s people are doing. Officials should be required to get an order of deportation from a court before deporting a person. They should be required to use appropriate diligence in verifying that an apprehended person who they think has an existing order of deportation against him really does. They certainly should not be allowed to change a person’s status from legal to illegal alien because of his politics or opinions. Neither should they be allowed to ship even properly deported people directly to prisons in foreign countries. If they want to jail someone, they can charge him with a crime.

Beyond that, they should show some humanity. There are valid questions about what welfare and governmental services should be available to illegal aliens, but those are separate from the issue of mass deportations. The claim that illegal aliens are criminals by definition because they are illegally in the country is false. A crime is an unjustified actual or threatened act of physical violence against another person, the theft of property through robbery, extortion, or fraud, or the severe damage of property through vandalism. A criminal is someone who has committed a crime. Being in the country illegally is against the law but is not a crime and does not make an illegal alien a criminal, any more than breaking the speed limit laws makes most of the rest of us criminals. While they should not be voting or offered a path to citizenship, most otherwise law abiding illegal aliens who have been here a good while and have made a life for themselves should be left alone. Certainly those in that group with children or spouses who are citizens and those who have spent most of their lives here should be.