Mass deportation isn’t just impractical. It’s very, very dangerous.
Danielle Allen and Richard Ashby Wilson in this Washington Post op/ed questions the mass deportation stratgy endorsed by Preesidential canidate Donald Trump, suggesting that it is a typo of “ethnic cleansing” and has been seen at various times in U.S. history, including the Trail of Tears, repatriation of persons of Mexican ancestry during the Great Depression, and “Operation Wetback” in 1954:
“Currently, we are seeing net outflows of immigrants across the Mexican border, as has been the case since 2009. In other words, we do not have an immigration crisis. But even if we did, history has shown that crisis rhetoric, coupled with a racially tinged aspiration to mass deportations, has repeatedly led to episodes that harm some severely, perhaps even mortally, and is likely to bring shame on us all.”
KJ