“Hillary Clinton,” Donald Trump said in his immigration speech Wednesday night, “talks constantly about her fears that families will be separated. But she’s not talking about the American families who have been permanently separated from their loved ones because of a preventable homicide, because of a preventable death, because of murder.”
He went on to add: “Zero tolerance for criminal aliens. Zero. Zero. Zero.”
That’s how Trump chose to discuss the problem of violent convicted criminals who are present in the U.S. illegally yet are allowed to stay. As he often does, Trump put everything in the strongest terms possible, often shouting for emphasis.
His speech was greeted by an avalanche of cant from political opponents and news media, but there is nothing in the statement above that people can reasonably oppose. Deportation is a necessary tool for enforcing immigration law and protecting citizens. Every nation state recognized this obvious truth until about five minutes ago. And that’s never truer than when deportation is used to remove convicted criminals.
Policies that welcome criminal aliens encourage illegal immigration, and make it easier for them to stay even after they serve jail sentences. Such policies are not liberal, but pro-crime.
President Obama recognizes this. That’s why his 2014 executive action (currently held up by the courts) sought to concentrate deportations specifically within the population of criminal immigrants.
Some immigrant activists have derided Obama as the “deporter in chief,” because the overall number of deportations increased during his first three full years in office. Immigration hawks disparage Obama because since 2012, overall deportations have fallen about one-third below Bush-era levels. But shrill denunciations from both sides miss the central point about deportation that both Trump and Obama accept, which is — How many criminals are being deported?
The number of non-criminal deportations has declined almost every year since 2008. But the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has this year deported substantially more criminals than it had in its last two years under Bush. This was even true in 2015, when ICE removed 26 percent fewer people than it had in 2008.
In both 2012 and 2013, ICE deported more than 200,000 criminals, compared to less than 120,000 in fiscal 2008 and 2009. The only bad news is that the number of criminals removed was only 139,000 in 2015, which is still a higher number than it used to be. But the point here is that this is the number that matters most.
People of good will can disagree over the precise criteria for deportation. But no one can reasonably disagree that deportation is a good and useful tool the federal government can use to make a contribution to Americans’ safety.
The next president should ensure that proven criminals are the main focus for deportation enforcement, as they pose the greatest threat to Americans’ safety. And Congress should help that president make criminals the main priority, with appropriate funding and authorizing language. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the issue, “priorities have to be set” because there are 11.3 million illegal immigrants in the country, and the federal government has the funding to remove just 4 million. Criminals must be the priority, and they should receive no quarter.
The need to deport criminal immigrants is agreed by Trump, Obama, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and the Gang of Eight drafters of the immigration reform bill. Even Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who in a debate earlier this year made an impossible promise to deport no one who lacks a criminal record, did not go so far as to say they would not deport criminals. This is the societal consensus position.
It is dangerous to turn against deportation, as some people seem to be, just because they want to excoriate Trump and the way he frames the issue.
