Jim Cason and David Brooks
Correspondents
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, December 10, 2024, p. 23
Washington and New York. The number of undocumented immigrants arriving at the US border will plummet in the first days after the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency, on January 20, but in the medium and long term previous efforts to close the border and deporting millions of migrants arriving from Mexico did not reduce that flow to this country.
The president-elect’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is already generating fear among undocumented populations in cities and towns across the country. Families are afraid that their children are away from home and prepare contingency plans for them in the event that their parents are detained; Some are already contemplating returning to Mexico or other countries in the face of this hostile and threatening climate. Analysts also predict that the efforts of the incoming Trump administration will impose even more costs on Mexico due to the growing population of foreigners forced to wait there while trying to enter the United States.
Threats of a closed border and official anti-immigrant rhetoric could deter many from attempting to cross the border, but only for a time. On January 20, 2017, when Trump took office in his first presidential term, the flow of immigrants across the border with Mexico almost disappeared and the following months (February, March and April) saw the lowest numbers of crossings. of the border in decades. This, it is predicted, will be repeated next year, and is part of the strategy of Trump’s advisors to repeat their statements that entry to undocumented immigrants will not be allowed.
President Trump, on his first day, will sign a series of executive orders that will seal the border and begin the largest deportation effort in US historydeclared Stephen Miller, Trump’s anti-immigrant advisor, who has been named deputy chief of staff in the White House of the future administration. These executive orders could include restarting the Remain in Mexico program to force asylum seekers to wait in that country while their petitions are processed, expanding the expedited deportation program, and ending programs such as temporary protection from deportation that have already been implemented. allowed almost a million migrants from countries in crisis or with violent conditions to remain in the United States for years.
Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, declared in an interview with Fox News that Republican congressional leaders They have promised that they will be able to approve a funding package for the border in January or early February, the most significant border security investment in US history.. These funds, he added, will support a massive increase for Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officers working on deportations, a historic increase in Border Patrol agents and a salary increase for them, full funding for military operationsas well as for migrant detention sites and border barriers.
Asked about some of these measures on Sunday, Trump responded that the first deportation orders will focus on migrants accused of committing crimes – a category that ICE places at 662,566 – some of whom have been accused, but not convicted, and many of whom are not imprisoned.
Trump, in an interview with NBC News, said that he intends to deport everyone who is in this country illegally. It is a very difficult thing to do, but there are rules, regulations and laws. They arrived illegallyhe stated. But as is often the case, Trump later contradicted himself by suggesting that a solution needs to be found for the dreamers –those who arrived as minors to this country with their undocumented parents–, to allow them to remain in the United States.
Regarding whether he would seek to restore the controversial measure of his first presidency, in which he forcibly separated families, Trump responded that the best way to avoid it would be to deport the entire family together. We will send everyone (back), very humanely, to the country where they came from, so the family will not be separatedhe told NBC.
A second priority for deportation will be the 1.4 million people in the US immigration system who have orders finals of deportation, but who continue in the country. Another 1.7 million subject to deportation will be those who are awaiting hearings on their asylum applications.
There are historical precedents for mass deportations. Trump has even cited the “wetback operation (wet back)” during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, in the 1950s, as a role model today. In 1954, former U.S. Army General Joseph Swing joined the Border Patrol and organized a military-style deportation effort that included raiding workers in fields, surrounding urban parks, and arresting anyone who appeared to be Mexican. Many were loaded onto cattle cars on railroads and transported to the border from Los Angeles and other cities.
In interview with The Dayhistory professor Kevin Johnson of the University of California, Davis, explained that Immigration officers were sent to stores and public places where immigrants were supposed to congregate. There was no great concern for due process. It was quick and dirty. The federal government said it deported 1.3 million people, including many who were US citizens.
But Professor Johnson asserts that a better parallel to what Trump is proposing would be the lesser-known mass deportation of Mexicans during the Great Depression in 1931 under Herbert Hoover. “That was led by local and state governments. “Police conducted raids in public places…approximately one million people of Mexican descent, including many children of immigrants, were deported,” he reported.
The expert pointed out that none of these mass deportation programs managed to put an end to undocumented migration. Employment is the main factor that motivates immigration to this country, he recalled and “as long as those jobs exist, they will come. The Operation Wetback “It had very little impact on the undocumented population in this country,” he said.
To prove his point, Johnson noted that in the mid-1990s, the undocumented population in the United States was something like 5 million. He added that today, although federal spending to stop undocumented migration has tripled, the undocumented population is between 10 to 11 million. There is no evidence that repatriation workshe concluded.