Imagine an illegal immigrant in the United States whose only crime—either here or in their own country—is that they jumped the U.S. border. They weren’t released from a prison in their home country, nor a mental institution. They have no stateside police record, and aren’t a member of a gang. With Donald Trump’s presidency only weeks away, status as a “law abiding” illegal will likely delay at least temporarily an individual’s becoming a target for mass deportation.
This group of immigrants probably represents the vast majority of illegal aliens. That’s not to minimize the alarming number of criminal aliens Joe Biden and Kamala Harris welcomed into the country. Listening to new Border Enforcement Chief Tom Homan on a recent Dr. Phil podcast leaves no doubt. He and Trump are coming for immigrant malefactors, and they have an incredible enforcement arsenal at their disposal.
Homan admits that working through and removing the bad apples will take time. In his discussion with Dr. Phil, he talks about force multipliers—local law enforcement, the military etc.—that will be brought to bear on the problem. He assures American citizens of all races and ethnicities that the designation “sanctuary city or state” will be meaningless in the grand scheme of gaining control of the immigration crisis.
Homan also calls upon those aforementioned Americans to aid and assist the effort. The old terror-fighting phrase “If you see something, say something” takes on a new meaning as a plurality of millions who voted Trump understand now that if illegal immigration isn’t brought under control, the nation’s in jeopardy of being inextricably overrun.
It follows that individuals who’ve stayed under radar in terms of migrant crime after illegal entry, will have some time on their side. As the Trump administration focuses on the worst first, it must be presumed that there are legions of ostensibly non-criminal illegal migrants here who will now think twice about anything that might put them in Homan’s crosshairs.
This great deterrent effect on the contemplation of anything unlawful—identity theft, drug dealing, shoplifting—is already reaping benefits for lawfulness in American communities. Hopefully, if a migrant drives drunk and causes an accident, and gets caught, he or she will be placed on a fast track for deportation.
It’s true that being a “good” illegal alien won’t save such individuals from ultimate enforcement scrutiny. Even with a competent and committed leader like Tom Homan at the helm (a man who’ witnessed firsthand the human carnage wrought on both American citizens and illegal migrants by the current broken system) Trump may be into his third year of his term before the worst offenders, the terrorist watch-listers, the gang-bangers, and outright evildoers, are rounded up and their cases adjudicated under Trump’s new policies.
The word goes out now in migrant communities: “Stay out of trouble.”
There’s a flip side. Trump’s “bad hombres” know what’s coming too. Chances are that a percentage of them won’t go down without a fight. On January 21st, we may end up with a shifting paradigm in which most illegals strive to stay clean and under the radar, while another smaller but dangerous contingent will consider no law unbreakable to the end of avoiding being deported.
