“It would tear communities apart”, Bush said to Trump. Moved a million 1/2 illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border. Let’s go to McArthur Park, you want to have a conversation about undocumented immigrants and illegal immigration and deportation? If they came from a certain country, they’re going to be brought back to that country. Implemented by President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, the program was frighteningly simple: round up undocumented immigrants and drop them off in Mexico by the busload. But did he really move that many in one operation?
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In the Fox Business debate Tuesday, Donald Trump revived his execrable anti-immigrant politics: linking undocumented workers to inner-city drug abuse, promising to build his border wall, and insisting again that millions of immigrants without papers must be expelled from the country. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us.
The operation was named after a term for Mexicans who crossed the Rio Grande that is now viewed a racial slur. Otherwise, we don’t have a country. We came across estimates of forced removals ranging from 250,000 to 1.3 million.
The case of California is a good example.
“It was not humane, it was a military style of operation”, said Mae Ngai, a professor of history at Columbia University. This continued, so Trump has a bit of a point there. Bush said “They’re doing high fives in the Clinton campaign when they hear” the GOP arguing over immigration. Moreover, law enforcement would have to deploy the most un-conservative, and intrusive, police tactics to find these people.
“So, before we even begin to debate this concept of ‘immigration, ‘ the most useful – the most revolutionary – thing we can do is rediscover the subversive pleasure of thinking for ourselves”, the analyst concluded. The guest worker program ended in 1965.
In September, speaking to CBS News, Trump lauded Operation Wetback and suggested his own plan would be painless. The Free Beacon clipped parts of Trump’s Wednesday morning interview with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where the billionaire magnate reiterated that there would be an immigration force, a wall with a great handsome door, and the ability for newly deported illegals to return legally because a few of these people are terrific.
Not only will his immigration plan definitely work because a nice man did it once; it will also be “cheap”, although Trump did not explain how. “You’re going to have a deportation force”, Trump agreed, “and you’re going to do it humanely”.
Please see www.politifact.com/georgia/ for the full fact-check with all sourcing.
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Trump said that the number deported by Eisenhower was closer to 2.2 million, and that his predecessor, Harry Truman, deported an additional 3.5 million.
