This article is the Opinion of the writer, Deirdre Purdy, former Chair of the Democratic Party. It does not align, nor do I agree with its content. I publish it to allow their voice in a free country. – Shari Johnson, Publisher
On the third day of the Republican National Convention, “Mass Deportations Now” signs were provided. Conventioneersthroughout the audience enthusiastically held their signs high and chanted “Send them back.”
It’s not just weird, it is horrific, to watch presumably goodpeople so wound up by Trump’s hateful, false, xenophobicviews on immigrants that they cheer for this un-American, dangerous, and destructive plan.
In 2023, America had a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration plan, written by hardline Republicans that President Biden said he would sign, but Donald Trump directed House Republicans to tank the bill because he wanted immigration as a campaign issue. His solution? Deport 11 to 20 million people.
The plan is not just a convention attention-getter. The Republican platform contains Twenty Republican Promises. Numbers one and two:
1. SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION
2. CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY
“On day one, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump tells his rallies.
Be very afraid, Trump tells his followers. Twenty million people are coming from jails, prisons, and insane asylums, leading to the “plunder, rape, slaughter and destruction of the American suburbs, cities and towns”.
Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” (“Blood poisoning” was Hitler’s term for what he believed was the evil of race mixing.) They are “animals,” they are “not people, not human.” They are “bringing very contagious diseases.” “They are coming in as terrorists.”
The truth: undocumented workers work. They paid close to $100 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022 although often the benefits are denied to them. They have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens. They are doing jobs that native-born Americans do not want to do.
Trump points to Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback as his model. In 1954, border officials rounded up 300,000 Mexican nationals and sent them back to Mexico. The Wetback operation is recalled as a shameful chapter in American history that made no long-term difference in immigration on the southern border.
Fast forward to 2024 and Operation Mass Deportation.
Trump plans workplace raids and sweeps in public places, arresting scores of people at once. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, deputized local police officers, and National Guard soldiers contributed by Republican-run stateswill run the roundups. There will be no due process at the point of seizure.
Trump’s immigration czar Stephen Miller expects lawsuits butsays that their fast-moving “blitz” will overwhelm immigration rights lawyers. They also count on right-wing judges they have put in place.
Imagine raids in your city or your neighborhood. Maybe a husband or wife or both are disappeared. Are there children who are citizens? They might be taken too, or they might be left behind. If just a third of US born children of undocumented immigrants remain in the US, it will cost $118 billion to raise them until they are 18. Worse, the social cost is immeasurable.
Three-quarters of undocumented workers have incomes at or above the poverty level. Removing them from their householdswill plunge millions of US families into poverty.
Most of the 1.6 million mortgages held by undocumented workers would be in peril, jeopardizing the US housing market.
Since 40% of construction workers are undocumented, housing starts will stall. Food prices will skyrocket when farm workers, meat packers and dairy workers are carted off. Dairy costs are predicted to double immediately.
Economists say if Trump is elected and implements mass deportations, the US economy will be in recession in 6 months.
To detain and process people until they can be deported, Trumpplans to build huge concentration camps. Concentration camps are not necessarily death camps, at least at first. They are designed to separate people considered by the majority to be dangerous or undesirable. They result from the militarization of the problem and the dehumanization of the victims.
Direct costs of the deportation plan: Apprehension over 5 years: $158 billion. Necessary new camp construction: $34 billion. Detention: $29 billion. Legal processing: $7 billion. Transportation for just 6.22 million people: $6 billion. Incomplete total: $234 billion.
The economics are devastating, but don’t overlook the social chaos that will ensue as millions of people are swept out of our country. Protests, marches, offers of sanctuary, police raids and more people taken away is the perfect priming point for a total authoritarian takeover.
Now that Republicans have succeeded in depriving women of equal citizenship and bodily autonomy, mass deportation is the worst program ever offered by an American political party
Trump’s ruthless, racist mass deportation plan must be defeated. Vote Blue up and down the ballot. Vote Kamala Harris and her VP pick.
