A New Term for Trump + Insurrection Act + Immigration = ???

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“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country… That’s what they’ve done.”

Donald Trump at a December 16th Rally in New Hampshire

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…” 

Trump campaign speech, June 16, 2015

Most of those gathered at our southern border are not Mexicans, but that is indeed where most asylum seekers cross. Whatever else is said and done, Donald Trump’s “I am the victim” may carry weight among the MAGA crowd, but he has reached out to the entire electorate with a new primary issue, one that is finding increasing traction: undocumented immigration. Sure, there are other issues, but the economic arguments – which should be persuasive – have not moved the needle for Joe Biden. It seems that identity politics have usurped how and why people vote these days. See my recent Are Economic Realities Still Major American Voter Issues? Blog for my take on this change. Central to so-called “tribal” and “identity” voters is the notion of our nation being flooded by undocumented asylum seekers. This issue resonated, so Trump has made this a core platform focus.

As Trump slowly structures the mass of future appointed bureaucrats, culled and interviewed by the ultra-rightwing Heritage Foundation, will permeate every aspect of the Federal government under Trump. Having pretty restructured the judiciary in his mold, Trump’s cabinet appointments will obviously drill down on this immigration priority. Calling this an

emergency. Republicans want to close the southern border entirely, but is that even in our best interests given the amount of cross-border trade? Outgoing Mexican President Lopez Obrador noted, with a twinkle in his eye, that the economic dependency each country has for the other. "You would not be able to buy inexpensive cars if the border is closed. That is, you would have to pay $10,000, $15,000 dollars more for a car,” he said noting how much of what we eat and use comes from Mexico.

Building border walls, using barbed wire are popular all over the world are gaining popularity, from Hungary to Haiti: “As Haiti descends further into chaos and collapse, the Dominican Republic is speeding up work on a wall along the 250-mile border cutting across their shared island, aiming to stop human smugglers or criminals from crossing over, WSJ’s Santiago Pérez reports. As in the U.S. and much of Europe, control of the border has become a driving force in the Dominican Republic’s coming election. The wall also solidifies centuries of bitter divisions between the island's two developing economies.” Wall Street Journal, March 26th. Especially in Texas here! So, what can we expect of Donald Trump ascends to our Presidency?

Writing for the March 26th Los Angeles Times, DC-based columnist Doyle McManus, addresses whether Trump has the legal power to close that border and use federalized state National Guards to round up those undocumented inside the United States: “He promises to launch ‘the biggest domestic deportation campaign in American history’ on Day One of his new presidency.

“His chief immigration advisor, Santa Monica-born Stephen Miller, has spelled out what that would mean: Trump would assemble ‘a giant force’ including National Guard troops to seize undocumented migrants, transport them to camps in Texas and expel them… ‘A very conservative estimate would say about 10 million,’ Miller told pro-Trump talk show host Charlie Kirk… If ‘unfriendly states’ — like California — don’t want to cooperate, Miller said, Trump could order Guard units from red states like Texas to cross their borders to enforce the law… The operation would be ‘as daring and ambitious … as building the Panama Canal,’ Miller promised…

“That’s a pretty bloodless way to describe a process that would uproot thousands of families, separate children from their parents and disrupt communities. But before we get to that, a preliminary question:… If he wins in November, could Trump really do that?... From a legal standpoint, the answer is yes… If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and declares that the National Guard is needed to enforce federal immigration law, he could send Texas troops into California whether Gov. Gavin Newsom agrees or not, legal scholars said.

“‘We normally don’t want the military enforcing the law inside the country; law enforcement is supposed to be provided by police forces that are local — and locally accountable,’ said William Banks, an emeritus professor of law at Syracuse University. ‘But the Insurrection Act gives the president sweeping authority. You could drive a lot of trucks through that law.’… Newsom would presumably file a lawsuit against Trump to try to block the move, but it would almost certainly fail… ‘No state has ever sued successfully to stop a deployment of the Guard under the Insurrection Act,’ warned Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

“There are also practical concerns. Most National Guard units are neither trained nor equipped for law enforcement missions… ‘Tracking down undocumented migrants is complicated and time-consuming,’ Nunn noted. ‘You need people who know how to do it, like ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents’… ‘The Guard would resist that kind of mission mightily,’ added Banks. ‘They hate this kind of stuff. They would be better suited to patrol the border — to stand next to the wall, the fence or the river and discourage people from coming across.’

“So if Trump listens to his generals — not a sure thing — he’d be more likely to use Guard units to bolster weak spots on the border and manage those newly built transit camps for deportees… That would free up ICE agents for raids on Central Valley farms and Los Angeles sweatshops — which is what immigration agents did in earlier crackdowns, including the offensively named Operation Wetback, which expelled more than a million Mexican migrants (and some U.S. citizens) in 1954… So legally, there may not be that much California can do. But the fallout in a state home to an estimated 1.9 million undocumented people — roughly 5% of the population — would be difficult to imagine.

“The human impact of uprooting most or all of these California residents would be gigantic. Many undocumented migrants are members of families that include legal residents and U.S. citizens, including children… Many are deeply rooted in their communities; more than two-thirds have lived in the state longer than 10 years, according to one estimate… ‘When you harm the undocumented, you harm U.S. citizens too,’ said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles… ‘I’ve seen families devastated by the deportation of their loved ones. I’ve seen families, when the father is deported, go right into economic ruin,’ Salas said. ‘The trauma for children, especially small children, is enormous.’” Read that inscription from the Statue of Liberty above again.

I’m Peter Dekom, and this is not the America I grew up with; my mother was born in Bulgaria, my father in Romania and my wife in Mexico.