It’s no secret that Sen. Rand Paul is a nasty little piece of work, just ask Dr. Anthony Fauci. But every once in a long while the Bowling Green Republican rises to the occasion and shows he is unafraid to confront his old nemesis and new BFF, president-elect Donald J. Trump.
Trump, both during and after his successful campaign, made it clear he can’t stomach the idea of undocumented brown people working within the nation’s borders despite evidence of their contribution to a healthy economy. One of the first steps he is expected to take after his Jan. 20 inauguration is to blow America asunder to forcibly eject the 11 million uninvited guests. “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out,” he said during a pre=election rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. “I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, then kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”
No American city has been invaded or conquered. The vast majority of the undocumented are not bloodthirsty criminals. What incredible horse manure this man shovels. But it apparently smelled like roses to the 77 million people who bought the trash this guy was selling. A Pew Research poll released in September showed that 56 percent of voters support a mass deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally. But in a second poll released on Nov. 22, 64 percent of those questioned said undocumented immigrants should have a way to stay in the country legally if certain requirements are met.
Even so, support for letting undocumented aliens remain has declined over the past two years. In 2020, 75 percent of those questioned by Pew said they could remain if they met certain criteria. That’s an 11-point dip.
Perhaps the decline could be attributed to Trump’s hate-filled sloganeering, calling undocumented migrants murderers and rapists, blaming them for a crime wave that never existed, asserting that certain migrants from Haiti, in the country legally, were eating their neighbors’ pet dogs and cats.
All of it lies. Yet here we are.
Trump has on occasion said that all undocumented immigrants – presumably including the so-called Dreamers, those brought into the country illegally at a young age who have never known a home other than the United States — will have to leave the country and apply to legally return. Just how does Trump expect to carry out this master plan? First, he intends to declare a national emergency, perhaps as early as inauguration day. Then, if he follows through, he will at some point activate law enforcement and, subsequently, perhaps the military to assist in the deportation effort. Trump announced last week that he will place Tom Homan, the acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during his first term, “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.” a central part of his agenda.
“I think in terms of the National Guard,” Trump said in a pre-election interview with Time magazine, about calling in the military. “But if I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military, per se. We have to have safety in our country. We have to have law and order in our country. And whichever gets us there, but I think the National Guard will do the job.”
Trump further explained he doesn’t believe the law preventing the use of American military against the population without congressional consent, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, would apply.
“These aren’t civilians,” Trump said. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”
Some invasion. They enter to pick crops, build skyscrapers and do it at much lower salaries than American citizens would demand.
Earlier this month, Judicial Watch, a conservative legal organization, posted on X about reports that Trump intends to use “military assets” to deport migrants.
Trump took the opportunity to respond with one word: “TRUE!!!”
That’s the part that attracted the attention of Paul, who told Margaret Brennan on CBS’s Face the Nation last Sunday that “I will not support and will not vote to use the military in our cities,” although he supports rounding up those undocumented immigrants who have broken the law.
“So I would say All-points bulletin, all in but you don’t do it with the army because it’s illegal,” Paul said. “We’ve had a distrust of putting the army into our streets, because the police have a difficult job but the police understand the Fourth Amendment. They have to go to judges. They have to get warrants. It has to be specific. And so I’m for removing these people, but I would do it through the normal process of domestic policing.”
Paul said he would recommend that Trump employ the FBI, the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to conduct any necessary sweep. And he would concentrate on adjudicated lawbreakers.
“You put these people on an all-points bulletin,” Paul said. “These are the kind of people that are dangerous and that everybody needs to be the watch on. And they would go out and seek those people that we have about 30,000 very dangerous people already convicted of crimes, that should be the first priority for all of this. Let’s go find those people. But it’s not about detaining them, in all likelihood, they should be going to a jail, either a jail here or in the country they came from. So I think if we did that, there will be a lot of unity. If they send the army into New York, and you have 10,000 troops marching carrying semi automatic weapons, I think it’s a terrible image, and I will oppose that. But it’s not that I oppose removing people.”
Limiting the deportation effort to convicted criminals is reasonable. But Trump wants to eventually kick out the whole kit-and-kaboodle, a total he places at about 20 million people – almost double the true number. That would include the Dreamers, and he has a history of trying to get around constitutionally protected birthright citizenship, those born on America to undocumented immigrants.
Trump is psychotic on the issue of undocumented immigrants. He has used his social media outlet, Truth Social, to spread the scurrilous lie that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”
As a result, he claims, we are losing our country, a nation of immigrants.
Lies. All lies. And the American people seem to be buying in – at least until he puts his plan into action.
The price of massive deportation will be staggering, perhaps in the billions of dollars. Whole segments of communities will be torn apart. The nation’s food supply will face disruption because no one will be available to pick lettuce, tomatoes or any other produce. Costs will rise, especially since he intends to increase tariffs on Mexican imports, a plentiful source of American provisions.
These immigrants pay taxes but receive no government benefits like Social Security or Medicaid. That income to the Treasury will be lost. Labor will be in short supply, increasing costs almost across the border.
Union labor at least doubles the salary of those who are undocumented.
Folks need to go back a few years and pick up a copy of The Short Sweet Dream of Edwardo Gutierrez by the incomparable Jimmy Breslin, the greatest newspaper columnist who ever lived, to get an idea of why these folks along the southern border are so desperate to cross the Rio Grande and face grim and nearly impossible conditions, to make a few bucks to support their families, living under circumstances you wouldn’t wish upon anyone.
These are the people who are “poisoning the blood of our nation.”
Take a hike, Donnie boy. Take a hike.