Kamala Harris And Her Twisted Logic on Deportations
Immediately after President Donald Trump announcedthat Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will soon start deporting illegalaliens who have final deportation orders, Democratic presidential candidateSen. Kamala Harris published a series of tweets expressing her extremeopposition to the idea of deportations.
According to the California senator, deportations “violate ourvalues,” are a “shamefulstain on our country,” are “outrageous”and are “deeplyreprehensible.” Her justification for these statements was thatdeportations are “cruel,”in that they “push peopleinto the shadows and sow fear and danger in communities across this country.”
Perhaps Harris meant for these tweets to show the world howhumane, charitable and thoughtful she is. Instead, however, they demonstratethat Harris fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of deportations, and thestatus of the illegal and criminal aliens who are being deported.
Contrary to what Harris and other advocates for illegalaliens claim, ICE does not deport people in order to terrorize“vulnerablegroups.” Neither does ICE “[round]people up by ethnic group,” as Harris also claimed. Instead, ICE deportspeople for two main reasons: to uphold the rule of law and to protect Americancitizens.
Without enforcingdeportations, our immigration laws are meaningless. Illegal aliens, bydefinition, have broken our nation’s immigration laws. Accordingly, just as weall expect people who break the law to be punished for their actions, there isa repercussion for breaking our nation’s immigration laws: deportation. Without the deterrent effect ofdeportations, our laws would be meaningless and our borders would be in worseshape than they already are.
Deportations also keep Americans safe. A FAIR study foundthat datafrom the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) demonstrates that“illegal aliens commit crimes at a much higher rate than the rest of thepopulation.” And in some states, illegal aliens are on average more than fivetimes as likely to be incarcerated.
This fact is all too real to people like Uvalde, Texas,Mayor Don McLaughlin, who detailed thesecurity concerns of his small border town that is now overrun by illegalaliens. Or for SteveRonneback, whose son was brutally murdered by an illegal alien in Arizona.This is why the majority of deportees are convicted criminals: in the 2018 fiscal year, 57 percent of the 256,085 illegal aliens that ICE removed wereconvicted criminals.
Even the most hawkish immigration proposals prioritize thedeportation of criminalaliens over all other illegal aliens – a fact that, when combined with theUnited States’ unique practice of affording due process tothose who enter illegally, undermines Harris’s picture of ICE indiscriminatelytargeting innocent migrants.
The willful ignorance that Harris and other advocates forillegal aliens display towards the true nature of deportations shows that theydo not care about American citizens. Instead, they only care about trumpetingtheir virtuosity to the world, often at the expense of the people who electedthem. Our immigration crisis will never end until the elected representativesin Washington, D.C., understand that feeling good about themselves cannot takeprecedence over their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the UnitedStates.