Following in the footsteps
Trump is doing the deportations thing just as he said he would, but the reporting reveals that the Biden and Obama administrations did plenty of deporting themselves. It’s not clear to me that Trump is doing anything radically different.
A cornerstone of Trump’s immigration policy is removing unlawful migrants out of the US and the promise of “mass deportations”. To that effect, the defence department has said that it will provide military aircrafts to deport more than 5,000 people [who] have been detained by Border Patrol in San Diego and El Paso, Texas.
ICE statistics show that over 1,000 people were removed or repatriated on Thursday, the fourth day of the Trump administration.
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Deportations are not unique to the Trump administration. Biden carried out deportations as well, with 271,000 immigrants deported to 192 countries in fiscal year 2024.
In total, Biden carried out 1.5 million deportations in his four years, according to figures by the Migration Policy Institute. That is around the same that was carried out under Trump’s first term. That number is lower than deportations carried out under Barack Obama’s first term, which added up to a total of 2.9 million.
Aka twice as many. Obama deported nearly twice as many as Trump in their respective first terms.
I gotta say, the reporting hasn’t always reflected that fact.
Trump himself, of course, is part of the reason for that. His constant lies about how we can deport our way out of this situation with undocumented immigrants would fall a bit flat if he admitted he’s just been following US policy, anyway. The big difference is that he wants to cut due process out of it–which will almost certainly result in actual US citizens of a certain hue being deported.
Also, he wants it to be noticed; Obama and Biden have a radically different base. Plus, all most Americans see is more immigrants in their communities (even some communities that really aren’t gaining that many; I think there’s a lot of counting of the same person twice for the average man on the street).
iknklast. Yeah, and a lot of confirmation bias, too–most immigrant populations tend to be insular and low-key, so if you’re not looking for them, they can be easily overlooked. But when you’ve been goaded to actually look for them, suddenly it seems like immigrants are everywhere, overnight, so it feels like a dramatic change.
The due process bit is important. I’ve seen reports (unconfirmed so far) that ICE agents have been given a quota of arrests to be made each day to boost the numbers. Apparently Trump is unhappy with the ‘low key’ start to the program. The response seems to have been that ICE Agents are responding to g by arresting pretty much anyone they see who maybe looks foreign and can’t produce satisfactory ID on the spot. That’s included at least a dozen American Indians to date (ICE not accepting tribal ID cards), and at least one well publicised case of a US military veteran born in the US. Rights groups are indicating this is just the tip of the iceberg. the approach seems to be to arrest everyone and let the Court sort it out.
While we have a commentator who loves talking about the ‘good’ Trump is doing, it’s worth noting the bad. By his unconstitutional trashing of the 14th Amendment Trump seeks to do away with Birthright. No-one in the US can prove citizenship except for those comparative few who have been naturalised. There are no ID documents or forms that state a person to be a citizen. I’ve seen journalists and lawyers whose families have been in the US generations say they have documents that prove they were born in the US, but without the 14A that doesn’t mean they are citizens. If SCOTUS supports Trump, which is possible, I’ll let all you bright people contemplate all the myriad ways this will be awful in the short and long term.
It’s also clear that the administration’s view is that the word “illegal” effectively attaches to anyone who is an immigrant unless granted special dispensation by the sovereign.
If Trump removes birthright citizenship, will it be retroactive? If so, he’ll have to deport himself and his entire family, won’t he?
No. One, Trump’s grandparents emigrated to the US. Two, the removal of birthright citizenship doesn’t mandate deporting people who were born here, it permits it.
As I understand it, there are two Supreme Court decisions involved in this executive order, and they are both in regard to what it means to be “under the jurisdiction” of the US. The earlier one decided that only children with at least one parent who was a citizen or permanent resident were “under the jurisdiction” of the US, so children born to visitors or temporary residents were not citizens. This was at a time when a great many Chinese workers were being brought in for various projects, and there was resistance to granting citizenship to their children. The later decision said that only children of diplomats and others with diplomatic immunity were not “under the jurisdiction” of the US, therefore the children of visitors and temporary residents were in fact citizens. The current administration’s executive order wishes to return to the situation described by the first decision, probably for reasons similar to those that led to the decision.
So, by the reasoning in the first decision, children with at least one parent who is a citizen or permanent resident would become citizens. That describes the Trump family.
I’m not under the impression that the administration wishes to revoke citizenship for anyone, but given the way things are going, I wouldn’t put it past them to try.
There’s often a bit of disconnect between public perception and reality when it comes to immigration.
Currently in Australia, we’re still a bit fixated on “boat people”, i.e. refugees. Whenever we get a surge in refugees, they still only make up a small portion of people migrating into Australia, but SCARE FACTOR! NARRATIVE! People like stories.
And progressives are lax about borders!
Same deal in Australia as elsewhere. Labor traditionally allow *less* immigration than the conservatives. The Greens have long had a low-migration quotient as standing policy – but are more compassionate towards refugees (who make up a small portion of total immigration… YET SCARE FACTOR!) The Greens have even sided with One Nation (far right anti-immigration party) at one point on immigration numbers.
Some time back even Keith Windschuttle took a shot at lefties for calling the Liberal Party (our conservatives) racist, on account of immigration policy, given Labor had largely been the more restrictive.
The whole “boat people” paranoia really took off in the late 1970s, and it was Bob Hawke of all people that was whipping things up. During the 1977 federal election he was, as then president of the Australian Labor Party, adamant that Vietnamese refugees had to apply via the official channels or be deported. Hawke later became Prime Minister.
People commonly associate the “boat people” thing with the later Howard Government during the post-9/11 period, forgetting Hawke entirely. It is, to be fair, easier to imagine Howard being cruel.
I have reservations about total immigration (both ways, up and down), but I don’t have an issue with asylum seekers coming to Australia via boat. Scary terrorists tend not to deploy their assets via driftwood – it’s unreliable. But it is immensely vexing and interesting in equal measure, that people’s perceptions are so far askew from the facts.
It’s hard to even talk about the facts when political tribes are so invested in hyperbolic narratives. Makes it easy for bullshitters like Trump, though.