Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:
Days before Donald Trump assumes the presidency for the second time, anticipation is building about what immigration executive orders he will issue and whether the threat of mass deportation will immediately concretize.
But sometimes campaign promises are not so easy to implement, once someone is in power and he begins to grapple with the reality of budgeting, the lack of infrastructure, of personnel, as well as the consequences that large-scale detention and deportation begin to have on the economy, communities, families, or a politician’s level of support. Trump’s shameful policy of family separation at the border fell apart after the harrowing sound of children crying, after literally being torn from the arms of their mothers and fathers.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich affirmed, in an interview with The Guardian, that it’s unlikely that the plans to deport undocumented people — and even people who have documents — en masse will come to plan.
“I’d be very surprised if you see any significant effort to change the game for people who are here legally. I just think there’s a very small faction of the [Republican] party that’s rabid about this,” Gingrich said.
And, he added that public support for mass deportations would “collapse” if stories surge “about mothers or babies or children being deported.”
Gingrich, of course, is part of the Republican Party pre-Trump and the MAGA movement, and the recently-elected president insists that mass deportations will be a reality, choosing the most anti-immigrant officials to lead the process, including Tom Homan as the border “czar” and Stephen Miller as head of public policy for the White House.
Trump hasn’t even taken control and there are reports of CBP detaining and deporting immigrants in agricultural areas, in the fields and surrounding roads in Bakersfield, California.
But I ask myself if, once Trump assumes the presidency, growers’ rejection of deporting the labor force that is required to sow, harvest, process, and pack their products will have some bearing on his plans. If food prices rise even more, for the lack of workers and shortages of goods, what will Trump, who also wants to lower food costs, do?
Being a showman, Trump will want to make the deportations a gross spectacle so that his MAGA followers say that he is accomplishing what he promised, but without a doubt other sectors who depend on immigrant labor in order to survive — not only the agriculture sector, but also the service, hotel, care, and constructions industries, to name a few, will not want him to take away their workers.
Then there are the immigrants with protection from deportation and work permits, like the Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) beneficiaries. Homan has indicated that, although they will focus on those who are a security risk, in reality no one is safe. Among the 1.4 million with final deportation orders, who are a security risk?
And Trump has signaled that something has to be done with the Dreamers. Gingrich supports legalizing the Dreamers.
CNN reported that, in meetings with Republicans in Congress, Homan has lowered expectations regarding mass deportations, among other things, because they are a highly expensive operation, they do not have the infrastructure to house and deport millions of people, nor the required number of agents. Homan says that he needs 100,000 beds in detention centers. And the article cites data from the American Immigration Council about the cost of deporting 1 million undocumented immigrants a year: $88 billion, and $968 billion over 10 years.
Trump can attest that campaign promises are difficult to accomplish. He never completed the wall that he promised in the first term, and now insists on completing, and Mexico didn’t pay for it, either.
Perhaps a dose of reality will make him reconsider some of his promises or even negotiate with Congress where the Democrats, despite being in the minority, can pressure the House of Representatives where the Republican majority is tight. Although, Democratic support for the controversial Laken Riley Act portends that they will cede a lot of territory.
For now, one has to be prepared for the worst and see if Trump’s extremism burdens him more than the economic, humanitarian, and potentially political disaster of mass deportations, because theory is one thing, and practice is another.
The original Spanish version is here.
