Donald Trump wants to deport 11 million migrants: is that even possible? Read more

Imagine this dystopian scenario in 2017: federal agents of the Donald Trump administration have stormed an urban immigrant neighborhood in which they know that 20% of the community is undocumented – and the new Trump “Make America Great and Deport Them All” law empowers those agents to round up and immediately capture everyone who is not a citizen of the United States and the US citizens who are related to those noncitizens.

But how will these agents distinguish between the 20% and the other 80% of those in the neighborhood who also happen to be Latino?

For that matter, how can Trump or his supporters even begin to distinguish between “the bad” Latin American immigrants and the millions of us with Latin American roots who live in the US right now in 2015?

While many reports have examined the astronomical cost of a Donald Trump deportation-dominant immigration policy to American taxpayers, very few have exposed the human costs and consequences of an extreme plan rooted in the belief that it is easier to racially profile and expel an estimated 11.3m individuals than work towards a more realistic and sensible solution for those who already financially contribute billions to tax rolls.

Donald Trump is an immigration Know-Nothing, and dangerous for Republicans | James Nevius Read more

In its barest form, Trump’s views about immigration boil down to this: a call for the immediate deportation of more than 11m undocumented individuals – pawns of a broken “free trade” system created by the very same American power structure that now laments the loss of jobs to other countries and the death of the middle class – and anyone who is related to those undocumented people, including actual American citizens. It should also be noted that the majority of people who would be targeted by a Trump came to the US from Latin America, mainly Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

If undocumented Latinos are Trump’s main target – and his statements suggest that they are – how then does one “round up” an estimated 11.3 million mostly Latin American people (a population larger than the 8.3 million people in the five boroughs of New York City) without targeting the larger pool of the 54 million Latinos who live in the country?

There would only be one way for Trump to declare victory and “make America great again”: to continue the legacy of “papers please” state laws that have been targeting US Latinos for years. This legacy originated in 1994 with the passage of Proposition 187 in California (later voided by the courts) and eventually transformed itself into Arizona’s infamous 2010 SB 1070, which initially gave local enforcement the power to check on someone’s immigration status during any “lawful encounters” (including traffic stops) and even charge documented immigrants if they didn’t have their papers at hand.

SB 1070 inspired dozens of other bills before the US supreme court deemed its mandatory immigration status checks for those not charged with crimes unconstitutional and discriminatory. The court, however, left intact the part of the law which requires that law enforcement check the immigration status of anyone detained or arrested, which has led to allegations of racial profiling.

That was only a few years ago, but now the 2016 Republican front-runner is regaling us all with tales of a lawless border (it’s not) and criminal immigrants ready to invade us all (they aren’t). Laws must be passed, he’s suggesting. We must kick them all out. America must be protected.

As a result, a Trump presidency would make laws like Prop 187 and SB 1070 seem toothless. One of Trump’s supporters already told a Latino journalist to “get out of my country”, and the fear of the US becoming a lawless, poor Spanish-speaking nation has become way too commonly voiced these days.

Trump has already capitalized on many people’s irrational xenophobia (no Mexican flags on the lawn, please), so it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that the American public would bear witness to thousands of people all over the country, being asked to present their papers to uniformed, armed law enforcement officers on the streets just to prove that they are authorized – though obviously unwelcome – members of this society.

Republicans have breathed political life into their very own Trump-enstein | Megan Carpentier Read more

To US Latinos, Prop 187 and SB 1070 are already the symbols of anti-Latino hate and laws that promoted racism over common sense; the results of the neo-nativists’ justifications that mostly white Americans (and the small number of US Latinos who succumb to their thinking) have to fight against all the “invaders” (the very same people bringing “drugs and crime” and “rapists” who Trump wasted no time excoriating when announcing during his presidential bid this past June).

A Trump presidency could well lead to federal laws inspired by Prop 187 and SB 1070: the thinking exists in Washington already and Trump’s Republican rival Chris Christie now suggests that we ought to track all immigrants like FedEx packages.

Luckily, many of Prop 187’s and SB 1070’s most ardent supporters are now either eternally vilified (Governor Pete Wilson), politically irrelevant (Governor Jan Brewer) or in massive legal problems (Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio). There has been a very rich history of activism against what these laws represent and these days, that history has caught the attention of younger (and digitally savvy) Latinos across the country – and perhaps it will be a lesson to Republicans giving serious consideration to following in their legislative footsteps.

The fights to stop Prop 187 and SB 1070 are just the first examples of how aware the nation’s Latinos have become about the immigration policies from both the right and the left. Whether it was telling President Obama “Not 1 More” when it came to the record number of deportations by his administration, protesting the rise of private prison detention centers, which house around 40% of the nation’s nearly half a million detained undocumented immigrations, or calling out Trump (and others, like Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush) for inflammatory language against immigrants, US Latinos have a deep understanding of how the immigration debate has hurt the entire community.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s unfavorable ratings amongst US Latinos are by far the worst among any candidate in the presidential race, and that has all to do with his extreme views on immigration.

Still, a push for national “papers please” law and more concentrated enforcement would essentially take this country into a xenophobic overdrive rarely seen in American history, nearly akin to the Trail of Tears, the Mexican Removal and the Japanese American internments during World War II.

That is the future to which Trump wishes to boldly lead us: a less foreign, less diverse, more English-speaking and – dare we say – more white America. And it has earned him the praise of those who believe in racial purity and those who tried to stopped buses filled with detained Central American families last summer. For years, the most remote corners of the political extreme have been adding anti-Latino rhetoric to their repertoire, and Trump’s candidacy has now legitimized such thinking for the Republican Party.

It's not just Trump: Latinos should boycott the Republican party en masse | Daniel Peña Read more

If Trump truly wants to continue promoting mass deportation under an Arizona-like law – and his fellow Republican candidates have no apparent desire to challenge him over how such policies smack of prejudice against US Latinos – it’s over for the GOP. Only 15% of US Latinos say they will vote in 2016 for a candidate who opposes a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants – as nearly every Republican candidate does – though more than 30% Latinos self-identify as conservative or independent. Republicans are pushing for a 2016 candidate with views more extreme than the “self-deportation” views of Mitt Romney in 2012 – who received only 27% of the US Latino vote.

Republicans could reverse course and try to explain just how absurd Trump’s deportation desires are but, apparently, Trump has already taken over the clown car. The problem for the party is that US Latinos aren’t really laughing – but they are watching and, eventually, they will be voting.