Mass Deportations Could Save America, but Not in the Way You Think

on Dec 10, 2024

SAN DIEGO -- Even as a Mexican American who supports immigrants and opposes President-elect Donald Trump, I'm eager to see the incoming administration deliver on mass deportations.

During a recent appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Trump was asked by host Kristen Welker if he planned, over the next four years, to deport everyone who is in the United States illegally.

Estimates are that there could be as many as 12 to 15 million undocumented immigrants in this country.

"Well, I think you have to do it, and it's a hard -- it's a very tough thing to do," Trump said. "It's -- but you have to have, you know, you have rules, regulations, laws. They came in illegally. You know the people that have been treated very unfairly are the people that have been on line for 10 years to come into the country."

Welker followed up, asking Trump if he was going to focus on people with criminal histories or expand the operation to include "everyone who's here illegally."

The president-elect ran away from that question faster than desperate people run toward the U.S.-Mexico border.

"I'm saying this," Trump said. "We have to get the criminals out of our country."

Mark my words. A lot of this will come down to how we define the word "criminal." If you violate U.S. immigration laws, does that earn you the title? Or do you have to go beyond that and violate a state statute to be considered a "criminal?"

Still, I'm anxious to see how mass deportations unfold.

It's not that the U.S. government forcibly moving several million undocumented immigrants back to their countries of origin is a good idea. It's a terrible idea. It presupposes that the way to "save" America from changing demographics is to destroy it from within by scrapping things that are baked into its immigration tradition -- compassion, pluralism, optimism and second chances.

And it's not that mass deportations wouldn't be highly disruptive to millions of lives and thousands of U.S. communities and gin up tons more drama, resentment, fear and bitterness. Americans would be pit against one another. Families would be divided, and the evening news would carry those heart-wrenching images on the regular. The American spirit would be diminished.

Also, it's not because mass deportations -- and the raids, roundups and racial profiling that would be necessary to bring them about -- would produce more of the chaos that has become a cornerstone of the Trump brand. You see, journalists feed off the stuff. I'm in the chaos business. And so, for me, the silver lining to all this is that Trump makes chaos like a popcorn machine makes popcorn.

And finally, it's not just because it'll be amusing to watch phony liberals clutch their pearls over shocking images of immigrants being arrested, separated from their families, housed in detention facilities and shipped out of the country as if nothing like this has ever happened in the history of America, when all these things have in fact been happening in varying degrees since the Clinton administration.

Since the early 1990s, successive administrations -- both Republican and Democratic alike -- have tried to win over suburban whites by cracking down on immigrants. Which is ironic because, without immigrants to care for them and do their chores, many suburban whites couldn't make it through the day.

Because they have to overcome the perception of being soft on law and order, Democrats are overly aggressive with deportations. Former president Barack Obama -- aka. "The Deporter-in-Chief" -- holds the modern-day record with more than 3 million removals in eight years. When I criticized Obama's immigrant crackdown, the lefties attacked me and made excuses for their guy. When President Joe Biden co-opted Trump's immigration policies, I criticized that too. The lefties attacked me again and made more excuses.

Now that the activists are back from their indignation vacation, it'll be good to see them worked up again.

Yet none of this explains why I'm eager to see mass deportations come about. It's because of all the consequences that will follow. Businesses will revolt once they can't find workers. Civil libertarians will file lawsuits when U.S.-born Latinos get caught up in the dragnet. Conservatives will lose all claim to being champions of family values.

Bring on mass deportations. Because they're a surefire way to destroy something that has mutated into an evil and destructive force and needs to be taken down: the Republican Party.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.