Dem
47
GOP
53
Of all the issues Donald Trump cares about, deporting immigrants is very high on the list. He is now targeting over 500,000 immigrants who entered the U.S. from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua under a Biden-era policy called "parole." The breakdown is 213,000 Haitians, 120,700 Venezuelans, 110,900 Cubans and 93,000 Nicaraguans. These people were granted a temporary legal status for 2 years. The policy was designed to reduce illegal immigration by making it legal. This seems akin to cracking down on jaywalking by declaring that crosswalks do not exist, and have never actually existed.
In the end, Trump does not want immigrants from south of the border, legal or otherwise. So effective April 24, he has arbitrarily and cruelly revoked the legal status of a bunch of them. After that, the immigrants can, and probably will, be deported if they have not self-deported before the deadline. In particular, they will be placed in a fast-track deportation process called "expedited removal," which grants the deportees fewer legal safeguards. Trump has also talked about stripping the parole status from 240,000 Ukrainian refugees as well, but so far hasn't pulled the trigger on them. Maybe someone whispered in his ear: "Ukrainians are white." Someone (Eric Blair?) once said something like: "All immigrants are equal, but some are less equal than others."
Immigration advocates have said the new policy will cause chaos and heartbreak around the country. The director of the Justice Action Center, Karen Tumlin, called the new policy "reckless, cruel, and counterproductive." Her organization has sued in federal court. So far, there has been no response from the courts.
For Trump, this is a lot of low-hanging fruit. It is a large group of people from countries he despises. Due to the registration procedure, he knows the names of all of them and can probably find many of them relatively easily. He could also publish their names and instruct employers to fire them to encourage them to leave on their own. Would this be legal? Who knows? Would Trump care? Probably not. The only thing that is certain is that he's going to spend a lot of time posting on his embarrassing little social media platform that he's "solving" the nation's immigration crisis. (V)