The Republicans have made immigration a big issue in the past several election cycles. When Democrats were in the White House, Democrats had an incentive to reach a global agreement with Republicans to try to fix a broken system. Trump, however, has zero interest in fixing the system. He wants mass deportations. Democrats have no incentive to cooperate with this concept of a plan.
The important thing to understand is that there is not a single immigration problem. There are multiple immigration problems.
The one of least concern to Republicans is with the legal immigration system. Depending on job skills and country of origin, a potential immigrant can be on a waiting list for several years. People who think they would be better off in the U.S. but are being told to wait six or seven years are likely to try other, not legal, methods to get to the U.S.
Moving to illegal immigrants, this category has three basic component parts. Each of these parts requires a different solution.
The first group are those that cross the border at unauthorized locations. Essentially, these people are entering by boat or by “off-road” travel (either by foot or off-road vehicle). This group is the group that would potentially be impacted by a border wall. But we already have man-made barriers in most of the locations where it would otherwise be easy to cross. The areas without barriers tend to be rather tough terrain which creates a natural barrier to crossing. While building a wall is part of Trump’s political DNA, it would be expensive with minimal impact on illegal entry. However, funding for a border wall could be included as part of a reconciliation package (and thus only require 51 votes in the Senate).
The second group are people who are smuggled in (typically on commercial motor vehicles) through border crossings. Between people and contraband, smuggling is a problem. Theoretically, it’s possible to do a thorough inspection of every vehicle. Doing it quickly, however, would require a massive increase of customs employees at the border crossings. Otherwise, such an inspection routine would create large scale traffic jams at the border which would delay legitimate traffic. While some in the Trump administration detest imports and would not mind delaying vehicles at the border, the growth of “just-in time” practices by many businesses would mean that such delays would hinder domestic manufacturing and cause shortages at many retail places. We saw in 2021 what backlogs of shipping could do to inflation.
The third group are people that came here legitimately — either on tourist, student, or work visas — and then stayed here illegally after their visas expired. This problem is the hardest one to solve. While we might know where people are initially, there is no good solution that would allow us to track these people when they opt to disappear. The U.S. probably can do a better job of identifying when somebody is supposed to leave and following up when they do not leave on time.
Turning to the “border crisis” problem, a large part of the border crisis are asylum seekers. Under U.S. and international law, a person facing political persecution in their home country can seek asylum in another country. In theory, the request should be made in the first country that they reach after fleeing. And that points out two ways to reduce the flow of asylum seekers. However, both ways involve diplomacy which makes it easy to identify but hard to do. The first is to work with the “home” county to reduce political oppression. Of course, most countries will say that they do not persecute their citizens. They would , of course, welcome assistance in putting down rebel groups and criminal groups that persecute supporters of the governments and those that resist those criminal enterprises. The second is that most asylum seekers are coming from countries other than Mexico. As such, we need to work closer with Mexico to improve the security at its southern border so that asylum seekers are applying for asylum in Mexico and coordinate with Mexico to be able to determine if those seeking asylum in the U.S. have sought asylum in Mexico (and thus can be turned away at the U.S. border).
Barring some solution that reduces the number of asylum seekers, the border crisis is a resource issue. When somebody shows up at a border crossing and requests asylum, there is an initial screening interview. In some cases, the screening interview reveals that the person seeking asylum does not have a claim that meets the legal requirements for asylum. Such people are denied entry and are returned to Mexico. On most days, there are enough officers available for the initial interview. The problem is those who pass the screening interview. Those people get a formal hearing. And there is where the resource problem occurs, we do not have enough hearing officers (or immigration judges) to give everyone a quick formal hearing. And we have to find some place to house these people. Even if we had quick hearings (two to three weeks), we do not have the space to house these individuals in some “asylum applicant camp” that would have comfortable quarters (as these people are accused of any crime) but adequate security to prevent them from just disappearing into the U.S. As a result, we conditionally release many asylum seekers until their hearing date. And many who are conditionally released fail to show up and disappear into the country joining that third group of unlawful immigrants (those who have overstayed their limited approved entry into the U.S.)
And that turns to the “massive deportation” agenda. The U.S. is not a police state. Lawful immigrants (whether asylum seekers, students, workers, or tourists) do not get fitted with a G.P.S. monitor upon entry into the U.S. So. when they overstay their welcome, we do not have the ability to have your friendly Immigration and Custom Enforcement stop by to escort the immigrant to a holding facility pending quick transport home. We have to find the immigrant. And that raises two issues which proponents of massive deportations have to address. First, where are the resources for finding the immigrant coming from? Are we really saying that the first priority of the army needs to be serving as additional I.C.E. agents? Second, how do we identify an unlawful immigrant? Particularly in this regime, and given past history, there is a real fear that anybody who looks Hispanic will be subjected to a “papers please” regime in which they repeatedly are stopped and forced to prove that they are a U.S. citizen (or have the appropriate documentation to stay in the U.S.)
And, once we do find the potential illegal immigrant, there is a little thing known as due process. There are laws on who can be removed, and those laws give immigrants the right to a hearing. We are not going to summarily remove people without giving them a hearing and an opportunity to prove that they have a right to remain in the U.S.
This need for agents to find people and the procedural rights to a hearing explain why most immigration enforcement actions targets those who have committed other crimes. First, criminal conduct triggers the right to deport both lawful and illegal immigrants. Second, the criminal justice system is not (at least for the most part) targeting certain groups in an effort to profile deportable immigrants. Once somebody is in custody for other reasons, the criminal history check performed on suspects identifies people who appear to be immigrants. (One of the things that shows up on a criminal history check is whether the person has a file number with Citizenship and Immigration Services.)
But an immigrant who is arrested on a crime is not immediately deported. For serious crimes, most prosecutors and judges do not see deportation as adequate punishment for a serious crime. Think about it this way, if somebody raped or killed a relative, would you be satisfied if the punishment was flying them to Columbia. As a result, immigrants who commit a serious crime will spend years in prison before being deported and there is a somewhat lengthy list (as revealed during the campaign) of those who will be deported upon the conclusion of their prison sentence.
And, as noted above, individuals facing deportation get a hearing where they can contest the grounds for deportation and attempt to prove that they fit within an exception that allows them to remain in the U.S. Even if the ultimate conclusion is deportation, that is not a guarantee that they will be deported. While in most cases, most “home” countries will accept the return of their citizens, there are countries (particular those with whom we are not friendly terms) which will not accept deported citizens. Do you really think North Korea allows plane flights from the U.S. with North Korean citizens who committed crimes in the U.S.? And we face the problem of indefinite detention of the worst of the worst deportees whom nobody wants to accept.
In short, we are in the position that we are in because of really difficult issues that have to be methodically addressed by a Congress in which many are more concerned with taking glib positions that sound good on talk shows than with actual solutions. Mass deportations is one of those glib solutions that is easier said than done. Of course, when der Trumpster has problems implementing this solution, he will blame the “deep state” (i.e. government employees who follow the rules) rather than admit that his solution is poorly thought out and that what is really needed are some major fixes to immigration laws and funding for the relevant agencies in the Department of Homeland Security (and maybe a Secretary who actually understands the issues facing that Department rather than a Trump loyalist who will merely parrot der Trumpster’s fraudulent lines about the issue).
