Mass deportations have been a critical plank in the platform of a revitalized GOP under former President Donald Trump’s and VP candidate J.D. Vance’s remaking of the party.
Not only has Trump energized his traditional MAGA base again in 2024, he has built a coalition of former Democrats, Independents, and outsiders including the likes of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Silicon Valley players like Marc Andreesen and David Sacks, as well as EV and aerospace magnate Elon Musk.
The coalition has perceived, and articulated, an existential threat to America on display in the Democratic Party’s authoritarian turn against free speech, innovation, and national security, and its favor to war, open borders, and censorship.
At the center of it all is immigration: can America sustain the costs of wage suppression, a major squeeze in housing with millions of illegal immigrants competing in the low and middle end of the housing market, gang-takeovers of apartment complexes and hotels, and the remaking of the country’s social fabric and loss of American cultural mores?
Cecilia Vega asks: “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?”
“Of course there is. Families can be deported together,” says Tom Homan, head of ICE during Trump’s family separation policy. https://t.co/If9G1sNEzj pic.twitter.com/TIWhi25Vdu
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 28, 2024
Mass deportations have risen to the top of the remade GOP agenda — and they’re popular with voters across the electorate. A shocking poll earlier this year revealed nearly half of Democrats support mass deportations. The policy remarkably enjoys broad support across demographics, including among a majority of Hispanic voters.
Still, the potential incoming administration is bracing for attacks from Democrats on the policy, as left media seeks to paint the issue as a humanitarian outrage or neigh-say the plan as costly.
A CBS interviewer claimed in an interview with Tom Homan, who led Trump’s immigration efforts under his first term, that deporting a million illegal immigrants could cost $88 billion a year. Those costs are not known.
Homan’s retort, “What price do you put on national security? Is it worth it?” puts the issue in sharp relief.
As Venezuelan gangs have taken over apartments and hotels in Colorado and Texas and gang robberies have reached America’s safest city, Cary, N.C., Homan’s remarks cut to the chase: what are acceptable downstream effects of the Biden-Harris’ administration’s open border?
And, how many towns will enjoy the fate of Springfield, Ohio and Charleroi, Penn,?
But the supposed cost of mass deportations conceals the U.S.’s colossal spending on immigrants. According to a blockbuster Senate report, low-skilled immigrants cost the United States between $84 billion and $95 billion each year in absorbing government benefits and services after factoring in the tax revenue they generate.
According to the National Academies of Science, the average immigrant without a high school education will use $844,000 more in government benefits than he or she contributes in tax revenue, and those with a high school education or equivalent will use $459,000 more in benefits.
Americans will pay twice: that drain comes after Americans have already paid to bring immigrants and migrants to the United States in the first place in the form of the hundreds of millions in government grants paid to NGOs and nonprofits to facilitate the flow.
So, how will mass deportations work?
Trump has said initial efforts would focus on gangs, such as the notorious Venezuelan Tren de Agua outfit and drug cartels.
If the proponents of illegal immigration have been able to rationalize, deny, or externalize the crimes committed by illegals and gang apartment takeovers, is it hard to argue that police action against Venezuelan gangs and drug cartels also be treated as the cost of doing business under the new administration?
Roughly 430,000 immigrants in the U.S., outside of ICE centers, have criminal convictions, according to one study, but the Migration Policy Institute found in 2015 that more than 820,000 immigrants had criminal convictions at that time. The criminal justice system could serve as an obvious clearinghouse for removing wrongdoers.
Much of the action could likely come through economic incentives such as imposing penalties on employers who hire illegals, cutting off welfare benefits and transfer payments to non-citizens, and fining cash remittances by immigrants to their home countries.
Millions of immigrants already self-deported under the Barack Obama administration and first Trump administration for economic reasons.
Shutting the government money spigot to illegal immigrants and noncitizens has precedent: in 1994, Californians passed Proposition 187 by a 20-point margin. The law would have ended use of state services by illegal immigrants and required law enforcement to check detainees’ immigration status and refer illegal immigrants to INS. Support for the law carried
Pete Wilson’s gubernatorial campaign to victory. In the 1990s climate, curbing immigration enjoyed popular support, including from Civil Rights icon Rep. Barbara Jordan.
In a bizarre twist, Kamala Harris, at her rally this weekend on the Ellipse in Washington, appeared to again crib a page from Trump’s playbook, calling for the “removal” of gangs and cartels. Does Harris want mass deportations too?
Doubts about her sincerity on restricting immigration or deporting Venezuelan criminals may be well founded given the Biden-Harris administration’s track record, but one thing is clear. Immigration and the economy are the issues of 2024.
Across Europe and North America, the rise of immigration-restriction as a key preference of voters now characterizes the politics of the Western world. Sentiments on immigration delivered elections for anti-immigration leaders in Italy, Spain, the UK, and Ireland of late, but so far Europe’s trajectory remains unchanged.
Voters will make their mark Tuesday, but whether their support for immigration restriction, and rejection of the Biden-Harris administration’s failed border policy, will be heeded is another story.
