Immigration reality check

For undocumented immigrants, their families, friends and employers, indeed for all who consider those 11 million people vital members of the American community, this is a deeply anxious moment — but one in which alarm must be tempered by reason. The prospect of mass roundups under a President who not long ago promised to march a “deportation force” through the nation’s streets understandably strikes fear into many hearts.

Accelerating the palpitations Friday was emergence of a January draft Department of Homeland Security memo outlining the activation of as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to assist with immigrant removals in 11 states at their governors’ discretion. The White House forcefully denies there are any such plans.

The news followed a Jan. 25 executive order that widens the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrest net — where priority for deportations was previously chiefly for convicted criminals and imminent threats to public safety — to anyone charged with any offense and anyone who ever made a misrepresentation to a government agency.

Jitters on top of jitters, mass arrests a week earlier by ICE swept up hundreds eligible for deportation, including 41 in and around New York City.

In this climate, only a Pollyanna would caution calm. But only a Cassandra would insist the mass deportations have begun.

Three in four of those arrested in the recent round of raids had previously been convicted of crimes — a rate consistent with those deported during Barack Obama’s first term.

In New York, they include two convicted of sexually assaulting children and one admitted Salvadoran gang member convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon.

Meantime, in his Thursday news conference, Trump suggested he was leaning toward maintaining many protections for so-called Dreamers brought here illegally as children.

Which is to say: Despite a swaggering promise that on “day one” undocumented immigrants are “going to be out of here,” the President has not begun to make good on the promise. Yet.

On the other side of the political spectrum stand Mayor de Blasio and other leaders of socalled sanctuary cities pilloried as bleeding hearts.

This, too, is a facile caricature. As the ICE raids attest, protecting every last undocumented immigrant from federal authorities is neither in de Blasio’s power nor mind.

In fact, as required by federal law, the city zaps all police booking fingerprints to ICE, which in turn may ask either for an individual’s release date from jail or detention for pickup.

De Blasio in 2014 signed a City Council bill allowing cooperation with such requests for individuals convicted of one of 170 felonies, accompanied by a judge’s warrant, and recently said that he will consider expanding the list of crimes covered. How about that, Mr. Trump? As with his promise to replace Obamacare with “something terrific,” Trump is reckoning with reality to which he was willfully blind as a candidate — here, that that ICE already pushed hard to deport convicted criminals and immigrants who had defied deportation orders, ejecting them by the hundreds of thousands.

Widen that net too far, and agents won’t have the manpower to catch the bad guys that Trump, de Blasio and everybody in between agrees need to go.

The nation may soon be torn apart by a federalist war over deportation by the millions. But as of today, even as the generals rattle sabers to rile up their faithful, both armies are standing down.