OBERLIN, Ohio — On Nov. 5, a majority of voters returned Donald Trump to the White House. Even more than previously, Trump focused this campaign on immigration, accusing immigrants of “poisoning” the country’s blood and mocking Democrats for referring to immigrants as humans. “They’re not humans,” he insisted, “they’re animals.”
Then, less than two weeks after the election, Trump announced that he would declare a national emergency to carry out the largest deportation in U.S. history, overseen by an administration bloated with immigration hard-liners, including “border czar” Tom Homan, Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, nominated to lead the Department of Homeland Security.
And who are we who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and vowed to defend immigrants to object? Didn’t voters just endorse Trump’s “Mass Deportation Now!” campaign?
There are three reasons to continue to oppose the president-elect’s massive deportation plans as what he’s said would be a day-one priority.
In the first place, what did voters think about Trump’s deportation plans? The answer largely depends on how polling questions were phrased. October polling by the Marquette Law School found that when asked, “Do you favor or oppose deporting immigrants who are living in the United States back to their home countries?” 58% approved. But when asked if they favored deporting immigrants “if they have lived here for a number of years, have jobs and no criminal record?” only 40% approved. A similarly timed CNN poll found that only 33% supported deporting all immigrants “already living in the U.S. illegally” when offered the alternative of “developing a plan to allow some people living in the U.S. illegally to become legal residents.”
Furthermore, national exit polls indicated, by a substantial 56% to 40% margin, that voters thought most undocumented immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status rather than being deported; even a quarter of Trump voters said they favored a pathway to citizenship.
The second reason is grounded in ethics rather than polling. Our democracy, after all, is based not only on majority rule but equally on the protection of minority rights. Large majorities have approved monumentally appalling policies in the past. Over 90% of those polled in March 1942 voiced their support for Japanese removal, and yet the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans after the United States entered World War II remains a dark stain on America’s past.
The question we face here is not whether voters support mass deportation but, on a moral level, how should we treat the “stranger” among us? The commandment to care for the stranger appears more times than any other in the Bible. The Quran and other Islamic teachings encourage hospitality and care for strangers, emphasizing the importance of treating all people with dignity and respect. The understanding that we are all God’s children and carry a spark of the Divine within us is a foundational conviction shared by many religious traditions. To argue that one’s citizenship should determine one’s membership in the human community, and therefore how one should be treated, is an affront to the very essence of that belief.
Guest Columnist Steven Volk is an Emeritus Professor of History at Oberlin College.Courtesy of Steven S. Volk
We will soon come face-to-face with the final reason to oppose the mass deportation of immigrants. Trump’s anti-immigrant electoral campaign depended on his ability to mobilize popular anger against a faceless abstraction: the “immigrant.” But when mass deportations begin, they will sweep up the shopkeepers, nannies, restaurant workers, and nurses you actually know; the real men and women who deliver your food and care for your elderly mother, your neighbors. Those who applauded the deportation of anonymous immigrants will soon face a different reality when their friends are rounded up.
Trump and his deportation-hungry aides will soon reclaim the White House. But the fight to protect our immigrant communities will continue – because our cause is just.
Steven Volk is an emeritus professor of history at Oberlin College who has written extensively on immigration.
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