How’s That Deportation Thang Going, Donnie?

 

How’s That Deportation Thang Going, Donnie?

Or is Deportation Just Your New Favorite “Deportes”?

Let’s see. You have your own private “police force” creating street checkpoints and making warrantless searches and arrests, often wearing masks and not showing any identification, sometimes in ordinary cars and civilian clothes. They’re paid a whole lot more than most entry-level federal jobs, even with reduced standards and open age limits, even collecting a bounty for their arrests. The money is so good that thousands are lining up at recruitment centers to help you find 10,000 new ICE agents with that massive cash infusion foisted on GOP congresspeople (who “just cain’t say no”) under Donnie’s profoundly mislabeled “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Mr Trump, results, despite your promise to focus on those “hardened” undocumented criminals amongst us, has become just meme. Your own statistics show both that the rate of violent crime among that class of individuals is far less than what is proportionately committed by US citizens… and that more than 75-80% of those arrested have absolutely no criminal arrest record. What you have now is a violent country, well beyond the gun violence that is vast multiples of any other nation that is not at war, that is reflected in our abysmal rating on the Global Peace Index.

“Produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), the index ranks 163 independent states and territories according to criteria including societal safety and security; the extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict; and the degree of militarization… Russia is, for the first time, the world’s least peaceful country, followed by Ukraine… The United States has a low ranking on the index, appearing at No. 128, below Honduras, Bangladesh and Uganda. This is largely down to its high level of militarization, which places it – under that criteria – down at the less peaceful end of the index, closer to North Korea (No. 149), Israel (No. 155), Ukraine (No. 162) and Russia (No. 163).” CNN.com, August 30th. Having federalized National Guardsmen and active-duty military roaming streets in major cities looking for criminals and undocumented residents doesn’t help those numbers.

While our border protection agencies are supposed to focus on border communities, there’s not that much in the way of illicit crossing there anymore, so Trump has moved his private police force with military back-up far away from that very lethargic southern border crossing… to where hardworking undocumented workers harvest our food crops, perform nasty jobs in meat processing plants, provide low cost labor for construction industry attempting to deal with a severe shortage of affordable housing, support small businesses (from restaurants to childcare)… as they pay taxes but generate no benefits for those payments.

The sacrificial lamb in all this is due process. Generally, rapid deportation has only occurred for recent illicit border-crossers, who are simply turned around and sent back. The numbers below come from the Deportation Data Project, which relies on actions under the Freedom of Information Act, collects and posts public, anonymized U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets.

Looking at the government’s own numbers, Barack Obama's administration deported more immigrants than any other in the last 3 decades. It carried out 2,749,706 deportations in 8 years, an average of 942 per day. During his first term (2009-2012), it averaged 1,088 per day; in the second (2013-2016), the daily average dropped to 794. But, between January and June 2025, Donald Trump's administration carried out 128,039 deportations, averaging 810 per day, fewer than in the years with the highest deportations under Obama. But detentions have reached record numbers: on August 11, 2025, it surpassed 60,000 arrests, with more than 80% without criminal records, according to ICE data. Clearly, with a massively increased private ICE police force, Trump’s numbers will rise… but are taxpayers and American businesses getting their money’s worth? Not by any measurement I have seen.

Border Tsar, Tom Homan, pledged that America’s unemployed underclass, particularly the homeless community, would soon replace all those lost undocumented workers. But unless we repeal the 13th Amendment and reinstate slavery, Homan’s prediction has staggered in failure. US citizens have never been willing to take those jobs at any price (and farmers have tried, for example).

But Trump is even taking noncitizens with longstanding legal status here, revoking their visas or green cards because they have spoken in favor of Palestinians or chastised Israel, where they have not engaged in a single violent action. Trump claims that they have no standing to challenge those revocations under the Constitution. For those who believe “due process” is only for citizens, “Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135 (1945), was a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that deportation proceedings against aliens lawfully resident in the United States must adhere to norms of due process. It further found that penalties for ‘affiliation’ with a proscribed organization under the Smith Act requires concrete proof of meaningful and ongoing association with the organization beyond casual cooperation or ideological affinity.” Wikipedia

Instead, we watch ICE agents act with astounding cruelty, puppy-killer Kristi Noem (Homeland Security Secretary) has condoned separating children from their parents, shipping detained undocumented to cruel overseas prisons in which detainees have never lived and has created domestic detention facilities that define cruel and unsafe treatment. Is this truly the America represented by our Statue of Liberty or simply end of the United States as the land of the free and the of the brave? We have instead become the land of autocratic cruelty.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I remain deeply disturbed at how many Americans believe these actions represent justice and being the best we can be.