Deportation jitters

While he made a splash in his campaign by his tough talk on illegal immigration — especially Mexican gangsters and Islamic State infiltrators — one can only hope for a softening of attitude towards other categories, such as non-violent illegal immigrants, as the practical realities of office settle in.

Has Trump slightly back-pedalled by saying it is not the average illegal immigrant who will be deported but mainly hardcore criminals? “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records — gang members, drug dealers...” However, he then quantified these criminal aliens as two or three million, a figure which on the surface is alarmingly high.

Does Trump have this figure in mind as a target to reach, to be filled by quotas that could ultimately include people guilty of minor offences such as traffic violations, or petty shoplifting? We hope not.

We never wish to see a nightmare of decent, hardworking men and women who overstayed their visa time being pounced upon in their workplaces by a deportation squad, or being cruelly snatched away from their children at home.

Post-election events offer glimmers of hope for a moderating of Trump, even in his stated desire to be “a President for all Americans.” Can we take heart from Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s recent remarks that “we are not planning on erecting a deportation force”? Is Trump’s own remark that in some places his intended wall on the Mexican border could be downgraded to the status of a fence, a metaphor for any softening of his hitherto hard-line policy on immigrants? We can only hope so.

Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, while a big critic of Trump, nonetheless on Monday told CNN of the immensely sobering effect on Trump of his recent briefing by President Barack Obama. Obama has sought legal status for 740,000 immigrants brought to the US as children — “solid, wonderful young people” — whom he urged Trump to protect as “American kids”).

We hope that moderating effects on Trump can be exercised by the popular media, by the voice of the street protestors in cities across America and by the stance of local authorities such as the Los Angeles Police Department which will not change its policy of refusing to turn over petty offenders to federal authorities for deportation.

At present, small nations such as Trinidad and Tobago must hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

Through Caricom, we should seek to make an input into unfolding events in the US and to prepare ourselves for a possible flood of deportees, which Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has said we cannot stop if they happen.

While some deportees to TT have committed crimes here, we must also support the efforts at rehabilitation by groups such as Vision on a Mission.

Even criminal deportees must be given a fair chance at integration into a productive lifestyle.

For example, a deportee might have originally left TT as a child and have lost all ties with this country and now find himself as a stranger in a strange land with just the shirt on his back, penniless, jobless, homeless and friendless.

Such people need a firm but fair guiding hand to get a fresh chance at a new life, not sink into criminality or vagrancy.

We’d suggest a study of the successes and failures of past efforts at helping deportees via both law enforcement and rehabilitation to guide policy in the event of a big influx of deportees.