Donald Trump’s signature campaign promise — to deport all illegal aliens — will take from eighteen months to two years, according to the candidate. Trump told Alabama Republicans that the time frame was doable with “really good management.”
The Alabama Republican Party hosted the dial-in call with Mr. Trump Thursday night as part of series with the 2016 presidential candidates. Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have also participated.
On the call, Mr. Trump was asked for details about how long it would take to round up illegal immigrants living in the U.S., with the questioner asking if five or ten years was an appropriate timeframe. Mr. Trump said his two year benchmark could be met with “really good management.”
“We have to get them out. If we have wonderful cases, they can come back in but they have to come back in legally,” Mr. Trump said in an audio clip posted on YouTube Thursday night by a person on the call.
Mr. Trump’s plan has been denounced by Democrats and many rival Republicans, who have called it impractical and immoral, among other criticisms.
Mr. Trump said he would remove illegal immigrants from the country “so fast that your head will spin,” and long before he could embark on his plan to build a wall spanning the 1,900 mile border between the U.S. and Mexico.
Mr. Trump also attacked Mr. Carson, and said the neurosurgeon couldn’t achieve the same results on immigration.
“It wouldn’t work for him because he has absolutely no management capability,” Mr. Trump said.
The two men have led some recent GOP polls, and Mr. Trump has stepped up his attacks of the neurosurgeon this week. Mr. Carson, in response, questioned the depth of Mr. Trump’s faith during a rally Wednesday night.
Zach Bowman, the director of voter engagement for the Alabama GOP, confirmed that call the call took place and that Mr. Trump laid out the timeline for his immigration proposal. Mr. Trump also stated that he would release a tax plan in the next three weeks, Mr. Bowman said.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
So how would this human round-up work? In practical terms, think of how many additional agents and bureaucrats would have to be hired to capture, process, and deport 11 million people in 2 years. Let’s give a nice round estimate at 250,000 new employees at ICE. That would make them one of the largest agencies in the federal government.
And you can say goodbye to to any semblance of budget control. The round ups will be expensive, although perhaps we could draft local law enforcement to help out. But then we have to build all those concentration camps to keep the illegals penned up so they don’t escape before we can deport them.
And speaking of deportation, just how are we going to get the illegals back home? Maybe we could ask their governments to come pick them up. More likely, we’re going to have to put them on planes, trains, and buses.
How many casualties can we accept in rounding them up? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Perhaps we should give some thought to the notion that there will be resistance to the round up and deportations. How many illegals are we willing to kill? How many agents are we prepared to lose?
And then what do we do with them when we get them where they belong? Do we just dump them by the side of the road? Let them off at the bus station? Perhaps we could charter some special trains — you know, with lots and lots of boxcars. As long as they have enough straw, it shouldn’t get too bad inside the cars.
What do you think would be the total cost of this operation? A hundred billion? Two hundred billion? And then we spend another $100 billion to build a wall.
Is Donald Trump an idiot? Or a liar? Judging by his belief that he could move 11 million people in 2 years out of the country, I would question his intelligence. By contrast, it’s taken 4 years of civil war, terrorism, and ISIS to send 11 million people moving out of Syria. The fact that he apparently doesn’t understand the human or economic cost of this reckless, inhuman effort — an effort that he has made painfully obvious to which he has not given a scintilla of thought — should disqualify him not only from the presidency, but from civilized company.
This is not a question of having “compassion” for illegals. “Compassion” by government for this group or that has resulted in catastrophe more often than not. It is a question of governance — the practical result of politics. It’s a political goal to deport 11 million illegals. But it matters hugely how that goal is put into the practical language of government — a language Trump is too ignorant to understand and too lazy to learn.
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