It didn’t even take until Election Day for Donald Trump and his designated border czar, Tom Homan, the acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the president elect’s first administration, to try to redefine the planned mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. What Trump promised in his campaign would be the greatest deportation in American history was already being recast as a rational and controlled process. Deporting people will be the
priority, the American public is told—but neither Trump nor Homan is clear on whether they plan to focus on people who are charged or convicted of a felony, those guilty of driving with a broken tail light or everyone living in the U.S. without legal immigration or work status.
The Wall Street Journal, in a Nov. 11 opinion, pointed to Trump’s admission during a pre-election interview that the issue of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants is “a complicated subject” that raises “human questions” about which “we have to have the heart, too.” Homan promised on CBS’ 60 Minutes that there won’t be “mass sweeps of neighborhoods” or “concentration camps.” The program will involve “targeted arrests” and “worksite enforcement operations,” he said.
What is clear is that the deportation plan is likely to end up as the Trump border wall program did: a media symbol aimed to discourage illegal border crossings rather than a fulfilled action that comes anywhere close to its stated goals.
The often cited statistic about one in four U.S. construction workers being immigrants is almost always stated as applying to commercial and residential construction, including stick-built single-family and multifamily housing—a separate industry sector that doesn’t include major open shop and union infrastructure, commercial and institutional contractors and subcontractors. How many immigrant construction workers are undocumented can’t be known, but it is likely to be millions and it is clear they are a valuable contributor to what America builds.
We wonder how the decidedly anti-regulation Trump administration will carry out deportations without depleting the major supply of labor that undocumented immigrants represent in many areas. Border security, an emblem of Trump’s first term, is a far better option than deportation and the random cruelties it entails.
Future raids on workplaces, however, are bound to sweep up longtime U.S. residents who may be undocumented but also have a steady employment history, no connection to drug smuggling or violent crime, families and deep roots in their communities.
We understand that a majority of U.S. voters supported Trump this time and appear to agree with deportations. But that doesn’t make those actions any less of a bad idea, or mean that Americans will continue to support them once all the facts are clear and the consequences understood.
