A look at the forest of the immigration problem rather than the trees shows that President Donald J. Trump’s illegal deportations are nothing more than a cruel form of entertainment for his followers who are cheering him on in the same way Romans delighted in the cruelties of Coliseum gladiatorial combat.
U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Carolyn Dineen King laid out the basic problem in 2015 when she defended one of President Barack Obama’s attempts to deal with immigration. As she put it, there were then 11.3 million removable aliens, or illegal immigrants, in the United States, but Congress had only provided enough money to remove approximately 400,000 of them a year.
In view of that shortfall, the Obama administration decided that it would put two groups last on the deportation list. The first program was Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and it delayed removal of those who had arrived in the United States as children. The second was Deferred Action for Parents of Arrivals, or DAPA, and it would have delayed removal for aliens who were the parents of United States citizens or legal residents, had lived in the United States for at least five years, had no criminal record, and met other criteria.
The programs were designed to permit lawful employment, to encourage those subject to the programs to identify themselves to the government, and to maintain flexibility if Congress provided more money for removals.
In the opinion to which Judge King dissented, the courts set aside the DAPA program because the requirements of the federal Administrative Procedure Act were not followed when it was adopted. So it never went into effect.
One objection to the Obama attempts was that the U.S. Constitution gives Congress, not the President, control over immigration, which it calls the duty to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” In addition, Congress controls the federal budget. So for both of those reasons the body legally mandated and fully capable of funding any attempt to address the problem of illegal immigration is Congress.
After decades of Congressional inaction, in the spring of 2024 Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate got together and passed an immigration reform bill. But it died in the House of Representatives after Presidential candidate Trump announced his opposition. He said the bill was inadequate.
President Trump then promised in his 2024 campaign to remove illegal immigrants from the United States. So, the logical thing for him to do was to go to Congress, get funding for additional deportations, and put that money to work.
But instead of proposing new, and presumably costly, legislation to deal with the problem, President Trump has invoked the 1789 Alien Enemies Act to deport a relatively small number of people alleged but not proven to be members of foreign gangs. Three federal courts have ruled the deportations are unlawful. The Alien Enemies Act only applies when our country is invaded by a “foreign nation or government” not by a gang. No such invasion has taken place.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the illegality of these removals was not a deterrent but was rather a motivating reason for them. Because they are illegal, they were guaranteed to create a sensation, to occupy hours of media time, and to give the impression that the president was so wedded to his campaign promises that he was willing to defy the law to carry them out. It did not seem to bother him that he had just taken a presidential oath to see that the laws were “faithfully executed,” i.e. properly applied.
When told that the persons being deported were entitled to due process, i.e. a hearing before a judge to determine whether or not they even were gang members, President Trump is said to have responded that, given the large number of needed deportations, there was not enough money. He added that “homegrowns” might be next.
He thus fell into likeness of a person who killed his parents and then complained about being an orphan. The reason the money is not in the budget is that President Trump himself orchestrated the defeat of the 2024 legislation which would have paved the way for deportations and has not gone to Congress to get the money he needs now. If Congress is not willing to fund mass deportations, then mass deportations should not happen. That certainly seems to be the best reading of the Constitution.
And until there is money, the “deportation games” will continue to play out in the media to the entertainment of the president and his supporters, to the misery of those subjected to this cruelty, and to the postponement of any real solution to the immigration problem.
Luther Munford is a Northsider.
