Deportation plan chilling, misunderstood

I commend The Dispatch editorial board on the Thursday editorial “Immigration push fraught with peril” for its thoughtful and realistic analysis of President Donald Trump’s deportation plan.

The president’s signature deportation agenda is predicated on one of many inaccuracies and fabrications advanced during a campaign of unprecedented bitterness and dishonesty: that the Hispanic immigrants are “criminals, drug dealers and rapists.” In his cleverly deceitful way, then-candidate Trump described the environment upon he would base his deportation plan. If one embraced his view of the immigrant community in such lawless terms, then his plans for an archaic wall, the hiring of thousands of additional enforcement officers and the expenditure of billions of dollars appear not only logical, but even essential.

In fact, the reality is much different. Studies by the American Immigration Council, the University of Texas, the Pew Research Center and others have found that firstgeneration immigrants are half as likely to commit crimes as the native-born. Immigrant communities have lower incidence of crime than their non-immigrant neighbors. Even the number of “criminal” violations, provided by immigration authorities and cited in your editorial, is greatly misleading as they include minor traffic violations in their inflated statistics.

As the editorial suggested, there is no way to carry out the deportation of more than 11 million human beings in a “humane” manner. The inhumanity of the plan is multiplied when one considers that many if not most of the likely deportees have been living here for many years, even decades. Their families are typically “hybrid,” in that one or more children are U.S. citizens, they have businesses, homes, and more importantly, a passionate investment in the American experience. I recently heard a young deferred-action beneficiary insist that she be called not an “illegal,” but an “undocumented American.”

The logical result of the president’s announced deportation agenda is to create fear as families contemplate their separation. Lately, my law office has been receiving calls from distraught parents wanting to make arrangements for their children in the event of the parents’ unexpected deportation. When listening to these parents I could not help but recall King Solomon’s challenge in the Hebrew Bible when asked to rule which one of two women was the true mother of a child. The answer was, and always will be, the one willing to surrender the child so that the child may live.

Examining the announced Department of Homeland Security measures for prioritizing individuals subject to deportation, it is clear to me that the entire undocumented community is a potential target for removal. There are many well-meaning people willing to agree with the president’s deportation agenda although perhaps based on incorrect information or “alternative facts.” I only hope that we all consider the action this exceptional country is preparing to carry out against a vulnerable community whose greatest crime is to want to be Americans.

Joseph Mas Counsel Ohio Hispanic Coalition Columbus