Immediately after GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump released his plan, Immigration Reform that Makes America Great Again, <\/i>on Sunday, August 16,<\/i> the media \u2013 along with the illegal alien special interests groups \u2013 launched a misinformation campaign labeling it as \u201cmass deportation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dara Lind of Vox <\/i>appears to be the first out of the gate just hours later when she editorialized, \u201cit’s important to stress that Trump has not explicitly called for deporting the children of unauthorized immigrants, even if those children are US citizens, en masse. But that’s the logical conclusion of his plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
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By Monday, most of the media were parroting the prepared statements made by special interests railing against the plan. \u201cTrump has reignited the GOP\u2019s longstanding obsession with mass deportation,\u201d said Pablo Manriquez, Democratic National Committee director of Hispanic media, in a statement appearing in the Boston Herald<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Throughout the following week, \u201cTrump\u201d and \u201cmass deportation\u201d were interchangeably acceptable headlines for all the major syndicated news outlets, including a widely distributed wire story by the Associated Press,<\/i> \u201cDonald Trump calls for mass deportations faces realities of nation\u2019s messy immigration system,\u201d <\/i>and Bloomberg<\/i> with, \u201cTrump deflects questions about high cost of mass deportation plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even FOX News<\/i> took the bait. In a highly charged question to the candidate, Bill O\u2019Reilly asked, \u201cDo you envision federal police kicking in the door in barrios around the country, dragging families out?\u201d<\/p>\n
But aside from the spin \u2013 even that heard in the so-called No Spin Zone <\/i>\u2013 neither the phrase \u201cmass deportation\u201d nor the word \u201cdeportation\u201d appear anywhere the four-page, 1,899-word document. \u201cDeport\u201d is used once to refer to the recommendation that, \u201call illegal aliens in gangs should be apprehended and deported.\u201d The plan does call for the \u201cmandatory return\u201d of criminal aliens and further suggests that all illegal aliens caught crossing the border be \u201csent home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Incidentally, under current law, all those categories of individuals are supposed <\/i>to be removed.<\/p>\n
In regard to automatic birthright citizenship, yes the Trump plan does support the end of that.\u00a0 No, it does not suggest that if the practice were ended that it would apply retroactively and result in massive deportations.<\/p>\n
The remainder of Trump\u2019s plan calls for securing the border, enforcing the law, drying up the incentives that attract illegal aliens and infuses the principle that \u201creal immigration reform puts the needs of working people first,\u201d and that \u201cany immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
For most Americans, there is nothing neither radical, nor even much new about Trump\u2019s plan because it primarily calls for enforcing laws already on the books.<\/p>\n
Despite that, don\u2019t expect the media to stop hyperventilating over Trump\u2019s plan. For six and a half years, they have championed the Obama administration\u2019s systematic whittling away of immigration enforcement and they don\u2019t want to see it rebuilt. \u00a0The canard of \u201cmass deportation\u201d will continue to be used in order to inflict \u201cmass destruction\u201d on any candidate who dares to defy the non-enforcement status quo.<\/p>\n
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This blog post was written by Bob Dane.<\/em>