Donald Trump’s deportation promise

Donald Trump has a mandate on the border and to deport criminals. But as he realises, more than that could get ugly fast if the public sees crying children as their parents are deported, or reads stories of long-settled families broken up.

Donald Trump won a second term in the White House by pledging to secure the US-Mexico border, and that includes sending a clear deterrent message to migrants before he’s sworn in again on Jan. 20. Last week a caravan of about 3,000 people set out toward the US from near the Guatemala border, according to Reuters, but many of them dispersed after Mr. Trump’s victory.

Mr Trump announced late Sunday that Tom Homan, his former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has agreed to be his new border tsar. Mr Homan will be “in charge of our Nation’s Borders,” plus “all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. Media leaks Monday said Stephen Miller, who advised Mr. Trump on immigration policy in the first term, is likely to be White House deputy chief of staff for policy.

Tom Homan becomes Donald Trump’s new border tsar. Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images.

In short order, Mr. Trump will move to reinstate the border policies of his first term, such as Remain in Mexico, which seemed to work. Under that deal, migrants claiming asylum in the US were sent back to Mexico while their cases were pending, which might take months or more. The idea was to break the incentives to game the system. Given the backlog of asylum cases, letting migrants into the US while they wait is an enticement to come.

The political rub may be Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to conduct “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” How it goes depends on what Mr. Trump means. Speaking Monday on Fox News, Mr. Homan said the priority will be “public-safety threats and national-security threats,” as well as migrants who “had due process” and “their federal judge said ‘you must go home,’ and they didn’t.”

Good to hear, and add what Mr. Homan told “60 Minutes” last month. “It’s not going to be a mass sweep of neighbourhoods,” he said. “It’s not going to be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Donald Trump speaks about illegal immigration at a campaign rally in Austin, Texas. Picture: AFP.

Instead he said Mr. Trump’s plan would involve “targeted arrests,” and eventually “worksite enforcement operations.” If officers making an arrest also find an undocumented grandma in the house, will they detain her? “It depends,” Mr. Homan said. “Let the judge decide.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, including Mr. Miller, have talked about mass deportation in sweeping terms. But enforcement priorities are up to the President, and Mr. Trump has suggested he isn’t interested in illegal grandmothers.

When he visited the Journal recently, we asked about aliens who have been here for years, who might have US citizen spouses and children. His response was that he wanted to help them.

“We have a lot of good people in this country, and we have to do something about it,” Mr. Trump said. “This has been going on for a long time. It’s a complicated subject.” He declined to specify whom he’d deport: “I don’t want to go too much into clarification, because the nicer I become, the more people that come over illegally.” Yet after stringent talk about deterrence, he ended with nuance: “There are some human questions that get in the way of being perfect, and we have to have the heart, too.”

Migrants walk into the US beside the US-Mexico border wall at Jacumba Hot Springs, California. Picture: AFP.

The public backs him on securing the border and reducing the burden that migrants have put on cities across the country. But as Mr. Trump appears to realise, support will ebb if the public sees crying children as their parents are deported, or reads stories of long-settled families broken up and “dreamers” brought here illegally as children deported to countries that they no longer remember.

Even as Mr. Biden’s failures turned the public against immigration, Gallup this summer said 81 per cent of Americans want a path to citizenship for those “brought to the US illegally as children.” That included 64 per cent of Republicans.

Mr Trump can do much on immigration by executive action, but a durable solution needs legislation. Maybe Democrats, after the electoral haymaker they got last week, will be willing to compromise more than they have in the past. Mr Trump missed a chance for a bipartisan deal in 2018 to permanently change the border incentives on asylum and more. He’ll have a narrow window again next year, if he’s willing and has the heart.