‘Mass Deportation’ Is Just Another Term for Immigration Normalcy
Joe Biden was the outlier on immigration enforcement, so it’s no wonder voters wanted a change
By Andrew R. Arthur on November 19, 2024
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised a “mass deportation” program if he were elected, and with the votes counted and Trump the winner, such a plan appears to be in the offing. Ignore the hype and dire predictions about the fiscal and economic costs of such a scheme: “Mass deportation” is just another term for the sort of immigration normalcy that’s been in short supply of late, and that voters demanded on November 5.
The Removals Rollercoaster. Take a look at removal and return statistics from the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS), and you find a “removals” rollercoaster over the past 11 years.
In FY 2014, ICE’s Enforcement and Removals Operations (ERO) directorate removed or returned nearly 316,000 aliens, a figure that dipped down to just over 59,000 in FY 2021 before rising to more than 227,000 in the first 10 months of FY 2024.
Even those figures are misleading, however, because they elide even larger variations in ICE removals from the interior of the United States during that period.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Mass-Deportation-Just-Another-Term-Immigration-Normalcy
