Trump's disastrous deportation plan

The disastrous deportation plan of Trump One of the main messages of former President Donald Trump - if not the main one - in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was that, if elected, he would order "the largest deportation in history" of undocumented immigrants. Many at the Republican Convention carried signs that read: "Mass deportations now!". What former President Donald Trump conveniently omitted to mention is that the deportation of many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country would cause an economic and humanitarian disaster. Donald Trump's promise to use the police, the National Guard, and perhaps even the military to arrest undocumented immigrants would not only turn the country into a police state, with possible random raids on Spanish-speaking people and the separation of parents from their babies, but would also cause a huge labor shortage that would drive inflation up. In his hour and a half speech at the Republican Convention, Donald Trump began talking about peace and love, but immediately returned to his usual narrative full of falsehoods about immigrants. "The biggest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country," Donald Trump claimed. The truth is that the flow of migrants increased in 2022 and 2023, in part because in 2019 and 2020, towards the end of Donald Trump's presidency, the pandemic caused many potential migrants to stay in their countries. What Donald Trump also did not say is that illegal migration is decreasing. Illegal crossings at the southern border plummeted by 40% during the first four months of this year, according to the Customs and Border Protection. Even worse, Donald Trump dedicated much of his speech to deceptively portraying undocumented immigrants as criminals. Obviously, there are undocumented individuals who commit crimes, but Donald Trump selects isolated incidents committed by immigrants to give the misleading impression that the majority of undocumented immigrants are violent criminals. Virtually all studies show that undocumented immigrants commit fewer violent crimes than those born in the United States. In addition, homicides decreased last year, according to the FBI. "They come from prisons. They come from jails. They come from mental institutions and asylums," Donald Trump stated in his speech, as if the majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants were criminals. "Bad things are going to happen." The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, another source that cannot be accused of being leftist, says there are nearly 9 million job vacancies in the country, but only 6.4 million unemployed workers. In other words, more immigrants are needed, not fewer. Towards the end of his speech, Donald Trump said that his campaign platform promises to launch "the largest deportation operation in the history of our country." Even bigger than "that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower." Dwight D. Eisenhower's massive deportation in 1954, which sent up to 1.3 million people to Mexico, included raids in Hispanic communities where many were deported by mistake, historians say. In summary, Donald Trump's incendiary speech against undocumented immigrants is based almost entirely on blatant lies. There is no doubt that reforming the immigration system and deporting criminals is necessary.