Deportation

You could call this Immigration Ban Part II, but that’d be wrong. This is also more than just enforcing existing law. The fact is both sides are wrong.

There are three important parts to what’s going on here. Trump is saying we can deport even if no one is convicted, he’s saying you have to be here for two years to be safe, and he’s sending everyone back where they crossed over regardless of their passport.

Let’s take this one at a time.

President Obama (so glad to even say that name) said if you were here for two weeks as an illegal immigrant before ICE or another relevant agency caught you, then you’d be afforded due process. Trump says he has empowered ICE to deport anyone here less than two years. Now, I support the law, and I support a punishment that fits the crime. I don’t know how Mexico or another country would treat someone with a record or even suspicion of illegal immigration, but I hope, wherever they go, punishment, if any, is fair.

Now, Trump also wants to deport someone who is suspected of a crime, even if not convicted. That’s just ridiculous. Suspected? Who gets to decide whether someone is a suspect? I mean, anyone, right? So, there ya go. Everyone is a suspect. I mean, that’s mass deportation without any due process or anything. That supports the punishment that, if you’re here illegally, just get out. Again, no detail, just get out.

Last, Trump has said he’ll deport someone back to Mexico even if they’re not a citizen of Mexico. I assume he also will deport someone back to the country from which they directly arrived rather than their country of citizenship because a Cleveland Clinic doctor was sent back to Saudi Arabia in the first days of the Immigration Ban even though she had a Sudanese passport. I don’t disagree with this. It is not our business to send them back to their country of citizenship, it also could be dangerous to support a safe passage through any country because you won’t be sent back there to face punishment for using it as a passageway, and we can’t be sure their country of citizenship is safe for them because they were obviously leaving conditions that, in terms of their pursuit of happiness, are worse for them than that of where they were going. I also think Trump wants to punish Mexico for not stopping people from immigrating through Mexico from Central America and anywhere else. In fact, it’s not uncommon to come to Canada first and then try to come to America since it’s so much harder to come directly to America. The same might be the case for Mexico even in instances where the country of citizenship is not contiguous with Mexico. Frankly, Trump is just trying to support enforcement of laws against illegal immigration in each country by ensuring that no country becomes a pathway to America for illegal immigration. It’s certainly okay to go through Mexico if you want to eventually arrive here legally, but to leave your home country with a plan to illegally immigrate through Mexico across the border, through the Caribbean by boat, or across the Canadian border, is something that I would certainly try to stop by leveraging those countries through which this could be done. All this considered, I’m not sure sending an illegal immigrant back to the country through which they illegally immigrated is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if they chose to go through that country, they must have felt at this temporarily safe so we may not be sending them back to conditions that are unduly harmful to them. Sending a Honduran back to Honduras would certainly be worse, and sending a Syrian back to Syria but who flew from Turkey is certainly worse, as well.