Over the weekend DHS took 121 Central American illegal aliens – adults plus their children – into custody to be deported. This is the initiative I wrote about last week, and it appears to be as inconsequential as I’d expected.
Considering the laughably small numbers and the very narrow range of targets (only Central American families who snuck in after January 1, 2014, and have been ordered deported and “have exhausted appropriate legal remedies, and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief”), you’d think there would be little objection.
You’d be wrong.
The ACLU denounced the arrests as “a scare tactic… designed to deport as many as possible, as quickly as possible.” The National Immigration Forum said “Deportation raids instill fear in immigrant communities.” The group #Not1More Deportation called effort “disgusting” and has started a petition to “stop the terror.” The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles told a Guatemalan paper (in Spanish) that “It’s a new wave of terror against our community, it’s horrible and inhuman.” And BuzzFeed headlined its story yesterday on the arrests “Undocumented Immigrants Detained Across U.S. For Mass Deportation”.
The removal of one one-thousandth of one percent of the illegal population – recent arrivals who’ve run out of excuses to stay – is mass deportation? It’s been clear for some time that the left – the mainstream, ostensibly respectable left – rejects the very idea of enforcing immigration laws. Their hysterical outbursts at this tiny little dribble of enforcement confirm what we already knew.