Opinion - Americans want mass deportations, period
If you’re watching MSNBC or CNN, the degree to which the idea of “mass deportations” will ruin the economy fluctuates by the hour. You’ll hear some claims that it is merely damaging, then others that it will cause apocalyptic inflation in the price of food.
Given these networks’ track record — which make Dick Morris seem clairvoyant by comparison — the American people aren’t buying it. And even if there is a cost, it’s a price voters are willing to pay because it is the only way to assert sovereignty over our border. Americans simply want mass deportations, no matter what.
More than mass deportations, the public wants control over our border — we want to know, and control, who is coming over it and for what. That goes not only for the southern border, but also the northern border and every airport and seaport in the country.
But the problem is most visible along the Mexican border. That’s because a steady stream of millions have been forming a conga line over it under the Biden-Harris administration, which greeted them with free phones and travel arrangements, then taught them how to apply for federal benefits.
That has to end immediately, even before the deportations start.
Once the deportations do start, expect the complaints to be deafeningly loud in the media. The very people who helped bury this problem for years, then slow-walked it, are now ready to wring their hands of the responsibility they so richly deserve if anything bad happens in the course of solving the problem. Don’t let their shrieking inspire pity. Rather, point the finger — whichever finger you want — right back at them.
Democrats, inside and outside of media, are already doing all they can to scare the voters away from what they just unambiguously voted for. Polls throughout the campaign were clear: Immigration — including securing the border and deportations — was at or near the top of the list of issues voters cared about.
“Grocery prices are high,” declares a headline from CNN. “Trump’s mass deportations could make it worse.” The word “could” is doing a lot of work here in an article that is light on facts and heavy on liberal spin.
“Beyond the moral,” CNN’s Matt Egan declares “legal and logistical questions raised by this campaign promise, mass deportations threaten to starve key industries of badly needed workers. And perhaps no industry relies on undocumented workers more than the food and agriculture industries.”
As the party’s history shows, Democrats do love cheap and even slave labor. However, to write this progressive doomsday porn, CNN had to cite a 2021 study by the left-wing Center for American Progress on the number of illegal immigrants (they call them “unauthorized migrants,” which is like calling a serial killer “an extremely late-term abortionist”) and quotes a Michigan farmer named Fred Leitz saying that deportations “would be devastating to the ag economy.”
Curiously, right after Leitz’s quote, CNN adds, “Leitz said his farm relies on visas to hire temporary foreign workers but does not employ unauthorized immigrants.”
The public, having already rejected every major narrative that Democrats and the media threw against the wall during the election (“Trump’s Hitler!” “Trump’s a felon!” and “Trump’s weird!”) isn’t buying it. They’ve already heard the very people who broke the system arguing that the problem they created is too costly to fix.
They have heard the argument that the problem can be addressed only with “comprehensive immigration reform” — which is code for amnesty and citizenship. Trump, promising enforcement without amnesty, won.
When “60 Minutes” framed the idea of deporting 1 million illegal immigrants as costing $88 billion, no one who didn’t already have their eyes closed even blinked. Doing what is right always has a price, especially when there was an unlimited budget for doing wrong. Americans are willing to pay.
This is about right and wrong, not right and left. Going after illegal immigrant criminals and those with deportation orders already issued against them is a great place to start, but there is no finish line for enforcing the law.
Trump will never face the voters again, but his legacy will. And that will be judged by how he handles this issue more than any other. Putting Tom Homan in charge is a great way to start, but it is only a start.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).
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