A prominent immigration advocacy group is pushing the press to focus immigration coverage on former President Trump’s promise of mass deportations, a series of proposals they say would wreak havoc on immigrant communities and the broader economy.
In a memo to the country’s editorial boards, America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas argued that coverage should focus on mass deportations because of their potential consequences, but also because of their scope, their unpopularity and because, she wrote her, a mass deportation plan is ready to be launched on the first day of a second Trump administration.
“During an election year with a dizzying volume of immigration news, the most consequential story line is Donald Trump’s central campaign promise, which is supported by prominent voices in Congress: sending American troops into American communities to conduct a massive roundup , detention and purging of immigrants who have lived in America for decades, including Dreamers,” Cárdenas wrote.
“This mass deportation would destroy American families, communities, and the economy in a way that would affect people across the country, regardless of immigration status or direct ties to the foreign-born. We must take this promise of mass deportation seriously and devote renewed attention to this potential catastrophe in the weeks and months ahead.”
Immigration advocates have become increasingly frustrated with both the press and pro-immigration politicians on both sides of the aisle as attention shifts from immigrants and their real effects on the U.S. economy and toward a relentless focus on the mechanics of migration, particularly in the US. -Mexico border.
The focus on border numbers has led Democrats and the Biden administration to support increasingly aggressive immigration proposals, including the failed bipartisan border deal in the Senate, shifting the spotlight away from Trump’s promises to expand his first-term crackdown on immigrants. .
“Although Trump used similar rhetoric and deportation promises during his first campaign and first term, we fear that a potential second Trump administration is prepared to actually implement this dystopian vision. Trump himself has detailed the details at rallies and in his recent interview with Time magazine, and this is combined with detailed comments from Stephen Miller and the chilling details of the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025,’” Cárdenas wrote.
“The mass deportation plans were designed to stoke fear and are ready to begin implementation on the first day of a second term.”
The attention given to new migrant arrivals and daily operations at the border has also blurred the lines of public perception of different immigrant groups.
While some Republicans claim that as many as 10 million new immigrants have arrived in the United States under the Biden administration, the Department of Homeland Security estimates that about 2.4 million people have been released into the country under one statute or another, among more than 6 million encounters between officials and migrants at the border.
Coverage of this new population often joins them to the approximately 11 million people who were already living illegally in the United States before the current global migration crisis, the majority of whom are of Mexican origin and have been in the country for more than a decade.
Trump’s proposals for mass deportations also do not distinguish between the two groups, and many Republicans have followed suit, openly supporting proposals to use the military to implement a mass deportation system.
“The prospect of hostile troops from red states roaming the avenues of blue cities, suburbs and rural areas to forcibly remove millions of our neighbors, friends, teachers and co-workers should be a persistent question posed to all candidates for all offices – do you support this vision of mass deportation?” Cárdenas wrote.
She added that, if approved, these mass deportations would destroy the workforce in a range of essential industries, from agriculture to construction to home health care, dealing a blow to the overall US economy.
And Cárdenas warned that the general population, while generally supportive of maintaining an orderly border, would react negatively to the kind of aggressive approach Trump is proposing.
“Americans would be repulsed by the authoritarian scenes of troops separating families. The visceral cross-ideological backlash against Trump’s family separation during his first term provides the best model,” she wrote.
From Cárdenas’s perspective, Trump’s unorthodox promises — and the fact that they are ready to be implemented — are a weakness for Trump and Republicans in a general election campaign.
“Trump’s plans for mass deportation are morally abhorrent, economically devastating and politically disastrous for his campaign and his party. The more people hear about them — the more they take the threats of mass deportation seriously — the more Americans will be repulsed,” she wrote.
And Cárdenas advised Democrats to use this revulsion to their advantage.
“For Democrats, this could be a unifying message. The conflict between talking tough at the border and supporting legal immigration and legal status for immigrants may be difficult to manage, but Trump’s clear and ugly visions of a second term present the opportunity to make clear the extreme and radical plan that the Republican Party is embracing it. ” she continued.
“Democrats need to consistently and repeatedly denounce extremism – and the extreme consequences of – mass deportation. Political observers should take this seriously and it should be a central immigration focus of the 2024 campaign.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
