Immigration and the southern border, it’s a huge issue. Maybe the biggest for many people.
Before we get to analyzing Trump’s deportation plan for illegal immigrants found in this country, it might be wise to provide everyone with some background:
BACKGROUND
Here’s a very interesting article by Berenice Garcia and several others in the Texas Tribune where very recently they actually went to the border, visited several sites and did an extensive report on what they saw. Here’s the link:
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/25/texas-border-24-hours-trump-harris-migrants/
[In fact here’s the Pew Research Center report dated October 1, 2024, the report is titled: Migrant encounters at U.S.-Mexico border have fallen sharply in 2024
And:
Here’s the Department of Homeland Security Report dated September 30, 2024:
Trump and the Republicans, of course, have been highly critical of the way the Biden Administration has handled the immigration problem at the southern border with Mexico. However last February (2024) after months of negotiation Democrats and Republican Congressional leaders were able to reach the type of compromise that contained the provisions that Republicans had long sought to stem the tide of illegal immigrants into this country. As such the Biden administration, last February, agreed to a bipartisan proposal that would have:
“…[E]nhanced border security by adding agents, deploying technology to detect smuggling, and hiring additional immigration judges to expedite asylum cases. It also proposed limiting asylum requests once daily migrant encounters exceeded 2,500.”
In addition:
“If the bipartisan proposal would have passed it would have added 1,500 more agents at the border, installed 100 machines to detect fentanyl smuggling, and hired 100 new immigration judges to reduce the wait time for asylum proceedings from five to seven years down to six months.” [https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2024/02/06/president-joe-biden-republicans-bipartisan-border-deal]
Despite the fact that this bipartisan proposal contained provisions that Republicans had long demanded, Trump had this to say about it:
“This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party,” Trump said. “It takes the HORRIBLE JOB the Democrats have done on Immigration and the Border, absolves them, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of Republicans. Don’t be STUPID!!!” (See RYAN CHATELAIN’s article at: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2024/02/06/president-joe-biden-republicans-bipartisan-border-deal)
Thus, because Trump opposed the bipartisan deal, it was killed and since February of this year the border has remained more porous than it would have if Trump hadn’t poisoned the deal to help himself get elected this November.
Thus, it would appear that Mr. Trump is not as interested in solving the southern border and immigration problem as he is in getting elected this November.
The southern border issue is incredibly complex simply because it involves not only federal law but also the inter-relationship between state, federal and international laws. . And, to make it even more complex, there is the issue of how much power the President has to act unilaterally without Congressional approval. (Doing so, is arguably very undemocratic and unconstitutional but feeling the heat and popular demand to “do something” the Biden Administration has recently shown more inclination to act even without Congressional approval—which we here at reasonandbalance.com would normally find to be quite objectionable, but can, in this instance, and especially given Trump’s apparent veto power with Republicans in Congress, fully understand and sympathize with.
As such, and feeling a lot of public heat the Biden Administration has taken additional executive action since Trump nixed the bipartisan deal just noted. Folks who want to see what the Biden Administration did in early June of 2024 when it was forced by Trump to take unilateral action to substantially reduce our Southern border problems should open and read the following link which describes what President Biden did: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/04/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-secure-the-border/
However, it is very apparent from the real facts that Trump was/is more interested in getting elected than in actually solving problems and this is true even when it came to fixing the immigration problem.
Secondly, Republicans, for whatever reason, will always cave to the demands and wishes of Trump. The lack of courage and fortitude shown by Republican Senators and Representatives (like Senator Graham) when comes to any matter on which Trump has any opinion whatsoever should make all voters doubt that their integrity and courage if comes to matters of any importance whatsoever. And we say this regardless of how many times they say that they aren’t Trump and/or that they wish Trump would do this or that. The only Republicans worthy of any trust at this point are the ones who’ve publicly come out in opposition to Trump when it actually mattered (that is, Republicans like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.)
TRUMP’s MASS DEPORTATION PROPOSAL
Various sources have analyzed Trump’s vague campaign promises to deport virtually all illegal immigrants. This of course is hugely appealing position to take to a nation that has an electorate that has been overwhelmed with immigrants. It becomes very unsettling for Americans to find themselves often surrounded by folks who don’t speak English, who have business signs and radio stations that broadcast in a foreign language. The estimated number of illegals is anywhere between 11 and 14 million people which is a larger than the population of most states. Pennsylvania for example has a population of just under 13 million.
For a very detailed analysis of Trump’s proposed mass deportation of illegal immigrants readers can consult:
and
And for those, who don’t have much time, here’s also another informative 1 minute video on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7Y3mDdTjI
It must be remembered that Trump promised mass deportations once before but the actual number of deportations that occurred during the Trump administration was far less than what he promised on the campaign trail. (I believe his administration’s actual deportations were only 10 percent or so of what he promised, but I’d have to double check.) Moreover, he promised to construct a border wall, It however, has not been finished. He also promised to have Mexico pay for the border wall that has been constructed, and that too has not happened.
A big reason for these failures is the size and complexity of the problem and the fact that promises are cheap and effective action on the scale he (Trump) proposes is probably impossible. Different sources come up with different numbers and much depends on the assumptions made in the analysis. But here are a few highlights.
To apprehend, house temporarily, process (legally) and then transport illegal aliens the cost would be somewhere between $220,000 billion (low end estimate to $600 billion)
Then because of losses to the work force (possibly driving up wages) and reducing the number of customers for remaining American businesses the economy would lose about $1 trillion to $1.6 trillion dollars in future growth.
To do all the deportations in 2 years as Trump suggests the size of the federal government would have to grow by well over 100,000 employees (see the American Action Forum article above) in an extremely short period of time.
And to make matters worse, for anyone with any humanitarian instincts at all, the disruption effects on children and families would be enormous and who knows what would happen to race-religious and ethnic tensions in this country.
Moreover, from a financial perspective, implementing Trump’s plan would:
- Cause everyone to pay much higher taxes (we figure at least 10 percent higher but probably much more simply because the current budget deficit of $1.6 trillion is already too high); and/or
- Cause the deficit to spiral further out of control (like Covid and the 2008 financial crises did) thus making future inflation and higher interest rates much more likely.
As such, it would seem impossible for Trump to honor any campaign promise to reduce everyone’s taxes if he also intends to deport illegal aliens en masse. If he promises to cut everyone’s taxes and make up the difference by imposing a system of tariffs, it guarantees that the price of all goods and services in this country will go up because generally prices of items subjected to new tariffs go up. In short Trump is making promises he can’t keep, and worse, he probably knows it, but doesn’t care. He’s lied before (that is, about his 2020 election loss and on the matters on which he’s been convicted in New York state courts) and he’ll lie again.