Harris Hits Trump Over a Deportation Plan That Could Have Been Dreamt Up by Democrats

on Sep 26, 2024

SAN DIEGO -- All of a sudden, Democrats are aghast at the concept of the U.S. government deporting undocumented immigrants.

Who knew? Although you won't hear it from a liberal media that is busy at the moment trying to get Vice President Kamala Harris elected, the Democratic Party has a long and not-so-proud history of aggressively removing individuals who violate U.S. immigration laws.

This new tune that Democrats are singing about deportations has everything to do with the fact that former President Donald Trump -- who voters trust more to handle immigration and border security, according to polls -- has vowed to carry out "the largest deportation operation in the history of our country" if he is reelected.

As Trump made clear during an interview this week on Fox News, that figure includes those who entered the United States unlawfully during the Biden administration through initiatives that allowed migrants to seek asylum from their home countries instead of just showing up at the already chaotic U.S.-Mexico border. Since that system was launched in January 2023, more than 800,000 migrants have used it.

Trump wants those folks to pack their bags. "Get ready to leave because you're going to be going out real fast," he said.

Ironically, requiring migrants to apply for asylum from their home countries instead of rushing the border is an idea that was floated several years ago by the Trump administration.

No matter. On immigration, as with most issues, Trump is not encumbered by principles or core beliefs. He doesn't have either.

To be fair, neither do Democrats. They usually avoid taking about the immigration issue -- unless they're scaring up votes from Latinos by manipulating them with dishonesty and hypocrisy.

Take it from a native Californian: Harris -- while serving as attorney general and U.S. senator from the Golden State -- largely ignored Latinos even though they make up about 40% of the state population.

But now that she is running for president, she found time to speak to a gathering of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Naturally, that is where she brought up Trump's mass deportation plan.

"While we fight to move our nation forward to a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward," Harris said. "We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history."

"Imagine what that would look like and what that would be," she said. "How's that going to happen? Massive raids? Massive detention camps? What are they talking about?"

What Harris is talking about? To borrow one of her favorite euphemisms, the Democratic Party didn't just "fall out of a coconut tree" when it comes to immigration enforcement. Over the last 30 years, Democratic presidents have shown that they can ramp up deportations with the best of them -- even if it tears families apart.

In fact, it was a Democrat -- Bill Clinton -- who helped build the apparatus for the expedited removal of undocumented immigrants by signing into law the draconian Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. IIRIRA increased the number of people eligible for deportation, sped up removal of the undocumented and made it harder for those who were deported to come back.

While GOP-led crackdowns on immigration are often fueled by fear and racism, the Democrats' motives are usually political and economic. Politically, Democrats want to neutralize claims by Republicans that they're soft on enforcement and desire an open border. In the economic arena, they're eager to serve benefactors in organized labor and protect blue-collar workers from having to compete with foreign labor.

In the deportation game, Democrats are the masters while Republicans are still mere amateurs.

According to an analysis by the Cato Institute, the average number of removals per year was 251,567 for George W. Bush and 275,725 for Donald Trump. For Barack Obama, a Democrat who deported about 3 million people in his eight years in office and earned the moniker "Deporter-in-Chief," the annual average was 383,307.

The Trump figure must have been a letdown to MAGA voters given that the Republican promised mass deportations in the 2016 election.

The Democratic Party gave up long ago the moral high ground that would allow it to engage in fearmongering over immigration.

And so, it takes a lot of chutzpah for Harris to use the issue to try to bludgeon Trump. If this daughter of immigrants really wants to defend immigrants, she should direct her outrage closer to home.

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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.