Trump says he will deport 11 million illegal immigrants. He says his deportation program will be unlike anything the nation has ever seen. He is right.
Trump says that Franklin D. Roosevelt deported over one million Mexican immigrants. Not literally true. His aide Stephen Miller must have told him that; Miller will probably be put in charge of the program if Trump wins the election. He hates immigrants.
Actually, the deportations were started in 1930 and reached a peak in 1931, before FDR was elected. Estimates for the numbers of those deported ranged from 300,000-2 million, about half of whom were American citizens. President Herbert Hoover approved the deportation program on the belief that Mexicans were taking jobs from white people. Most of the deportation was implemented by local and state governments.
What would it look like to deport 11 million people?
First, they would have to be rounded up in massive raids. Imagine the terror as federal agents arrived at the homes of immigrants and raided them, carrying away families–men, women and children.
Where to put 11 million people?
Then, the federal government would have to build thousands, tens of thousands of detention camps. Every state would have detention centers. This would be a massive undertaking, because the camps would need to be constructed and supplied with beds, food, personnel, doctors and nurses.
Trump has suggested that the deportees would each have a serial number. Would it be tattooed on their arms?
Inevitably, families would be torn apart, people would die, women would give birth in the camps.
The images sent around the world of detention camps for millions of people would humiliate our country as a cruel, heartless place.
Someone should drape a hood over the Statue of Liberty, so that she does not see what is happening as she lifts her lamp “beside the golden door.”
On the base of the Statue of Liberty, “The New Collosus,” by Emma Lazarus.
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
No more. Stay home. We are full. No more room. Not at this inn.
