Deportation plans

HOMELAND security secretary John Kelly has issued a remarkable pair of memos. They are the battle plan for the “deportation force” President Donald Trump promised.

They are remarkable for how completely they turn sensible immigration policies upside down and backward. A quick flashback: the Obama administration recognised that millions of unauthorised immigrants, especially those with citizen children and strong ties to their communities and the US, deserved a chance to stay and get right with the law. It tried to focus on deporting dangerous criminals, national security threats and recent border crossers. Kelly has swept away those notions.

He makes practically every deportable person a deportation priority. Kelly included a catch-all provision allowing immigration and customs enforcement officers or border patrol agents, or local police officers or sheriff ’s deputies, to take in anyone they think could be “a risk to public safety or national security”. That is a recipe for policing abuses and racial profiling, a possibility that Kelly will vastly expand if Congress gives him the huge sums required to hire 10 000 customs officers and 5 000 border patrol agents.

He wants to “surge”, his verb, the hiring of immigration judges and asylum officers. He wants to add processing and detention centres. He plans to publish data on crimes committed by unauthorised immigrants, and to identify state and local jurisdictions that release immigrants from custody. Why?

To promote the false idea that immigrants pose particular safety risks. Kelly promised before his confirmation to be a reasonable enforcer of defensible policies. But immigrants have reason to be frightened by his sudden alignment with Trump’s nativism. So does every American who believes the US should be committed to the sensible of laws.