I’m not claiming that Trump has some actual plan. But one thing that will be vaguely floating around his Swiss-cheesed brain is ‘hire the vicious guy, then when the vicious guy gets a lot of press for doing vicious things, step in and look like Mr. Reasonable Humane guy.’ And Trump will, for certain numbers of Spanish-surname people, “kindly” grant them temporary status instead of deportation.
And the reality will be, of course, that agribusiness who need cheap harvesting labor will have paid Trump $$$$$$$ so those workers will get temp status, and developers who need cheap construction workers to build their subdivisions will have paid Trump $$$$$$$ so those workers will get temp status, and so on.
And the legacy media will be falling all over themselves to praise Trump for being such a humanitarian for sparing those workers.
People like to say his plans are “logistically impossible”, but then, there was Operation Wetback inthe 1950s:
Overall, there were 1,074,277 “returns”, defined as “confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based on an order of removal” in the first year of Operation Wetback
This wasn’t even that big a program.
In June, command teams of 12 Border Patrol agents, buses, planes, and temporary processing stations began locating, processing, and deporting Mexicans who had illegally entered the United States. A total of 750 immigration and border patrol officers and investigators; 300 jeeps, cars and buses; and seven airplanes were allocated for the operation.[34
So, less than a thousand officers deported over a million people in about a year. So 10 million seems entirely possible to me.
Operation Wetback was the culmination of more than a decade of intensifying immigration enforcement. Immigration enforcement actions (removals and returns) rose rapidly from a low of 12,000 in 1942, to 727,000 in 1952, the final year of the Truman Administration.
It took a decade to ramp up to that. This wasn’t an effort that happened over a year.
What do you think we’ve been seeing the last 8 years or so? We’ve been watching the “ramp up” happening right in front of us. Trump’s family separation policies, ongoing deportations, and even state governors getting in on the action, both sending immigrants to other states with no warning, and deploying their National Guard forces to “defend” the border.
And we’re way, way better at logistics now than we were in the 1950s. Scaling up to what Trump wants to do is entirely possible, particularly if you don’t really care about trampling on a few people’s rights, or safety.
If I did the math right,
From 12,000 in 1942 to 727,000 in 1952 and 271,000 in 2024 should/could mean over 6,000,000 in 2032.
Not that the math really tells us anything and we can all ignore the cultural significance of 6 million…
Yes, and that operation “accidentally” deported a number of US citizens as well as people in the country illegally. All the legal protections of being a US citizen were meaningless if you “looked Mexican”. Oh, and over 80 people died as a result of this program.
So… yeah, people are sort of concerned given past history of mass deportations of people in the US.
Sure, let’s just ignore the complete lack of due process, the US citizens deported to a foreign nation, the deaths, the reports of beatings and abuse, and oh yes, transporting people like livestock.
But he’s got four years. Sure, the clowns will likely screw it up at first. But it’s not just the clowns at work.
The US has thousands of agents who can be tasked with this job. Among that group, there has to be at least a few who will be both willing to do this, and capable of doing at, at least on a local scale. At some point, those people will be noticed, and likely elevated to a national-level postings, where they will be able to bring their competence to bear on the whole issue.
Kris Kobach, Kansas AG, who has been anti-immigrant for decades, is now one of the key advisors to the Trump team on this issue. Hate to say it, but he brings up a good point:
KOBACH: “Once there’s a massive enforcement effort going on, then a lot of people start leaving on their own.”
“You can put a multiplier on that number, and it’ll be a much greater number. They will start leaving on their own because they don’t want to get arrested. They want to leave on their own terms, and so I don’t know — we don’t know — what that multiplier number is going to be, but there will be one.”
You mean the same Kris Kobach that led the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity? (Technically Mike Pence was the figure head leader.) The group that had spent a year investigating, found nothing, had several lawsuits filed against them, then quietly disbanded.
The very same. Also was the lead counsel for the We Build The Wall organization. Also spent about six years as Kansas SOS investigating illegal voting in Kansas and found about 15 infractions, all committed by American citizens.
Why we Kansans voted him in as AG in 2022 remains a mystery to me, as we elected a Democratic governor in that election.
Yes, the fellow who was, and still is, a true believer in Trump, and Trump’s agenda. He really thought he’d find evidence of voter fraud, and went about it in a (for a MAGA) competent and honest way.
He’ll do this job the same way. The big difference is, unlike voter fraud, illegal immigrants actually exist, and we know where to look for lots of them (farms, other low-wage work sites). He will succeed here unlike with the voter fraud nonsense.
Not sure where to put this, but this might be the most appropriate place.
A Republican Congresswoman from Texas hasn’t been seen in six months, and her staff have been covering for her absence. It turns out she’s been moved into a memory care facility where she is now resident, and nobody bothered to tell the rest of Congress or her constituents.
I’m sad for her but Jeebus H Crispy, people, don’t pull this shit.
That’s 81-year-old Kay Granger. In the accounts I’ve seen, there haven’t even been any staff contacts with constituents. She and her staff just vanished.
She is one of the infamous group of eight Republicans who spent July 4th of 2018 ministering to Putin in Russia:
