Donald Trump has taken Muhammad Ali’s “I am the greatest” to new levels. However, his proposal to deport millions of illegal immigrants is far from being the “greatest” way to bring about immigration reform.
When Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly asked Trump if his deportation program meant “federal police kicking in the doors in barrios around the country dragging families out and putting them on a bus” he replied, “We have to start a process . . . where we take back our country.”
Trump questions whether the 300,000 so-called anchor babies born annually to illegal immigrants are U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment.
He is wrong if he thinks that “start the process” means that Americans are ready to endorse having armed helmeted federal agents breaking down doors and dragging eleven million Hispanic, Haitian, or other illegal immigrant mothers, fathers, grandparents, and their American born “anchor baby” children and grandchildren, to detention camps to await deportation.
Trump and his advisers have obviously not noticed the international backlash which has temporarily halted a plan by the Dominican Republic to deport Dominicans of Haitian descent. A 2013 Dominican Republic Supreme Court ruled that people born between 1929 and 2010 in the country to non-citizen parents did not qualify as Dominican citizens.
In response, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees urged the country not deport the thousands of people who the agency said were arbitrarily deprived of their nationality following the Dominican court ruling saying in part: “It is of the utmost importance that the Dominican Republic takes necessary action to prevent any expulsions of stateless individuals and to avoid creating a new refugee situation."
Just imagine what the U.N. and world opinion would be if Trump’s deportation scenario comes to pass.
If the above example is not enough, remember the front page pictures of little Elian Gonzalez screaming as a goggle wearing helmeted federal agent with an automatic rifle dragged him from the arms of a relative who was hiding in a closet?
How many such “illegal immigrant” raids with pictures on the front pages of newspapers and displayed on cable and network television before a President Trump would be condemned in national and world press as well as the international community?
Trump and his supporters would probably say there is precedent and Supreme Court sanction for rounding up people and sending them to detention camps. Remember what happened after Pearl Harbor? In February of 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forced all Japanese-Americans, regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to evacuate the West Coast.
Ten internment camps were established in seven states holding up to 120,000 persons.
If it took 10 camps to detain 120,000 people, how many would have to be built to accommodate over 11 million illegal immigrants, including children, awaiting deportation?
And, if these concerns are not enough, do we really want concentration camp-style fears of people hiding from the Nazis to be unleashed in cities around the country as illegals are hidden or given sanctuary from Trump’s "immigration troopers?”
On such a serious topic, I have been surprised at how meek the media, except for Univision’s Jorge Ramos and as noted above, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, has been on this very sensitive issue.
Columnist and writer Thomas Sowell got it right when he wrote that the media is “obsessed with Trump’s show biz talents and persona — and covering everything he says, does or might do, 24/7.”
The time has come for a media, much of which, with a few exceptions, seems intimidated and mesmerized by Trump and his one line sound bite answers, to ask a few hard questions on his deportation plans:
- Will you sign an executive order to deport 11 million illegal immigrants and their children?
- Where would you send them while awaiting deportation?
- What do you mean by a “very humane fashion” for deportation?
- How many detention centers will it take and where would they be located?
Trump seems to forget that our country is based upon compassion and finding solutions to problems in a way not to denigrate the humanity of fellow human beings.
In the long run, Americans will side with that compassion and not the Trump alternative and demand that immigration laws be enforced which neither Obama nor Congress has had the courage to do.
They failed to act and gave Trump the opportunity, like it or not, to fill the vacuum. And, he sure has — in a dangerous way.
Clarence V. McKee is president of McKee Communications, Inc., a government, political, and media relations consulting firm in Florida. He held several positions in the Reagan administration as well as in the Reagan presidential campaigns and has appeared on many national and local media outlets. Read more reports from Clarence V. McKee — Click Here Now.
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