Donald Trump made a whole bunch of promises he is not keeping. Remember when he said, “I’ll launch the largest deportation program of criminals in America”? Yea, no. Hasn’t happened. Not even close. Of course, we know the man lies and twists things to suit himself. He said 15 million and possibly 20 million. Definitely, yea no. Let’s look at some stats from The Bulwark:
When he returned to power, Trump’s administration instituted arrest quotas for ICE, with a goal of hitting one million deportations during his first year. So far, it has been a failure. By the end of March, Trump will have overseen 113,000 arrests and 100,000 deportations, according to the highest estimates available. While those figures may earn breathless coverage in Trump-allied outlets like the New York Post, they are nowhere near on pace for his stated goals. Furthermore, they may be dubious.
So what do you think? A lot of attention has been on El Salvador. He also deported someone to Rwanda, of all places, and the government says he can send more. Of course, we’re paying them for this prison …er, place. Planes have gone to Venezuela. I’m sure there are others that were considered too small for the press to cover. (Gee, ya think?) Let’s have some more stats:
“That 100,000 number at the end of March cannot be correct,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said. “ICE made just 656 arrests on average per day during the first fifty days of the administration. To achieve 113,000 arrests by the end of March, the average rate of arrests would have had to leap up by a factor of six—to more than 3,800 arrests every day, for the rest of the month. These figures look even more fishy when you take into account that the U.S. Border Patrol reported apprehending a total of only 15,527 migrants at the border in February and March. Even if you were to add together the figures for these border patrol arrests and the ICE arrests, you still wouldn’t reach a number of arrests that makes the statistic of 100,000 deportations plausible.”
Now isn’t that interesting? It’s just more proof that Agent Orange lies, and lies, and lies. In a way, this is starting to get old. We have to wait and see if he actually spoke any of the truth until a few days pass. But in the meantime, he is trying to impress the American public by doing this and that and (NOT) following through on his campaign promises. But the lack of follow-through gets buried under the ridiculous things that he’s saying to amaze the public. News organizations with no pride, although not all, follow him around for the dribs and drabs he gives out, because you never know what will come out, and something might be usable.
Of course, in politics—especially Trump’s kind of politics—facts don’t matter as much as people’s perceptions. Trump’s immigration policies will succeed or fail depending on whether Americans view them as improving their lives. And there’s reason to think that Americans who wanted Trump to impose order on what they saw as a disorganized and anarchic immigration system instead see his immigration policies as contributing to chaos.
There are a lot of polls coming out recently that show tRump is underwater in his handling of immigration. I’ll bet he refuses to look at those, or it’s “FAKE NEWS”. How many times did he go off on FAKE NEWS? I don’t think we can even estimate a number. There’s been a 180-degree change on the part of some news organizations. So, here’s a little last bit for you:
What Trump has managed to do is draw attention away from his clamping down on the border by leaning so aggressively into deportations to El Salvador. As a result, Americans see the controversy around El Salvador less as a border and immigration issue and more as a matter of due process. “People want immigration to be quote-unquote ‘handled’ but they want it to be done in a way that fits with their idea of the American justice system,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick also told The Bulwark. “There is very strong support for giving people their fair day in court on immigration, so people understand that Trump’s idea that we can’t give them all court dates is ridiculous.” Trump recently protested against giving each deportee a hearing: “Such a thing is not possible to do.”
Well, if he didn’t sweep up *everybody*, instead of going after just criminals like he originally stated, yea, it would. He sent a couple of hundred men to El Salvador. We all know about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but there have been little blurbs here and there about families recognizing their loved family member, so there *have* to be more innocent people. The pictures that have come out of CECOT, the prison, are horrifying. We won’t go into Kristi Noem or a couple of Republican Congressmen. Those are just disgusting since they’re obviously set-up pictures. But Democrats couldn’t go. Interesting, yes?
It’s just one thing after the other that makes the way he is handling this more and more of a mess. He’s trying to terrify illegal aliens into self-deporting with all the stories coming out of CECOT. El Presidente Imbécil doesn’t want to remember that they live normal lives and pay taxes and support our local businesses. They are regular people who just happen to be “illegal”. There’s no reason to sweep up everyone in an area and send them to El Salvador. The vast majority are NOT criminals. I guess he thinks it makes him look good. They wouldn’t BE illegal if he hadn’t shut down the border and eliminated the due process to come in. They’re PEOPLE for chrissake. PEOPLE. Let them live here!
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