Surprise!  Deportation is Not A Crime Against Humanity

By Peggy Sands Orchowski

Deportation is not a crime against humanity.

This fact may come as a surprise to many enthusiastic advocates for illegal (aka "undocumented") immigrants. Deportation is resisted strongly by many Americans who support giving sanctuary to any immigrant facing official removal from the U.S.  The very idea of forcible removal  goes against the grain of those who hold up signs at immigration rights rallies that read "No more deportation!"  

I have been covering immigration as a credentialed journalist in Congress for over ten years. It has been truly amazing to see how deportation --  that is the legal removal of a foreign national out of one nation and back to his/her homeland –has become completely demonized by mostly well-meaning, heartfelt mainly liberal Democratic advocates for illegal immigrants.  

Even the most ardent supporters of President Obama became outraged when, by his third year in office, he had ordered the deportation of more illegal immigrants than any other president.  One of his biggest ethnic support organizations, the Council of La Raza – the most significant Latino rights organization in the United States whose long-time leader Cecilia Munoz was the White House community liaison on immigration for eight years – labeled Obama the "Deporter in Chief".

It didn't matter that the number of illegal immigrants President Obama had removed annually (about 250,000 a year) were almost all convicted felons and numbered less than two percent of the total illegal immigrant population in the U.S. (about 11 million). It didn't matter that the number of illegal immigrants deported each year made up about half the number of new illegal immigrants every year – about 500,000, with fewer sneaking over the Mexican border and more overstaying their legal temporary visas.  

By the spring of 2012, the negative reaction to Obama's deportation orders was beginning to openly affect his support among Latino leaders, considered to be crucial for bringing in the Latino vote for his re-election.  So Obama did an about face on deportation enforcement.  In June of 2012 he offered temporary deferment from deportation (tho not legalization) to an estimated two million illegal immigrant millennials ages 18-30 who could prove they had come into the country before the age of 16 and had earned some kind of a high school certificate. He did it by using "his phone and his pen" -- issuing a temporary executive order called DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

DACA protected about 800,000 successful applicants for four years from deportation.  It also gave them a similarly temporary work permit.  DACA did not give them legal status.  And the work permit grant is still constitutionally questionable.  

In 2017, President Trump rescinded the DACA order, also by telephone and pen, as he campaigned he would do.  DACA is to end March 5, 2018.  Beginning then, DACA recipients will be like all the other illegal immigrants in the country – vulnerable to deportation.  

While mass roundups of DACA recipients are highly unlikely, they still could be caught up in enforcement actions.  And they certainly face deportation if they are arrested, convicted and imprisoned for a major misdemeanor or felony.  

The plain truth is that foreign nationals who live and work in any country illegally, without permits from the national government, face removal.  Deportation is in fact a very common enforcement action used everywhere to remove people who should not be there.  The grounds for deportation are clearly spelled out in national immigration laws. In many countries (unlike the U.S.) illegal immigrants do not even have the right to face a judge; they are simply jailed and removed.

One can say that without deportation, immigration laws would be toothless, meaningless, mere shells that do nothing to prevent open borders.  Even all but the diehard libertarians in the U.S. who believe market forces alone should determine immigration, agree that there cannot be completely open borders. There must be some immigration process that limits who can immigrate and who can't.

Deportation is the only way to ultimately enforce national immigration laws.

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