In a startling upset that has blindsided the Democratic party, soon-to-be president Donald Trump‘s campaign managed to nab the vote of Latino men across the country. While his victory can’t be chalked up to a single group, the surprising turn of events has caused a shockwave to ripple through the Hispanic community.
Democratic-supporting Hispanics like Ana Navarro are still trying to make sense of the decision. Using incoming “border czar” Tom Homan’s own words, The View co-host voiced her concerns and spit out some facts about a stark future for the immigrant community.
The former director of ICE appeared on an October episode of 60 Minutes where he answered some questions about how the nation would handle the border situation under Trump. The 45th president has pledged to launch the largest deportation operation in the country’s history, and has tapped Homan as the head of, “all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”
“Wait until 20205,” he said, “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”
When asked how the new administration could commit to mass deportation without separating families, Homan has a vicious and simple solution, “Families can be deported together.”
While most Americans are on board for a more secure border, Navarro couldn’t help but focus on the inhumanity of Homan’s answer. “What he is saying is that ‘U.S. citizens can be deported.’”
“What he is saying is that if the parent is undocumented and they have U.S. citizen children, or U.S. citizen spouses and you don’t want to separate them, then let’s deport the U.S. citizens.” Trump has already promised to be much more aggressive on immigration in his second term. Now that Republicans control the House and the Senate, he’ll face far fewer roadblocks than he did the first time around.
“When you talk about mass deportations, people think ‘Oh, it’s just going to be the criminals,’” Navarro says, but preliminary research shows a much different story. The Pew Research Center estimates that around 8 million undocumented people currently call the U.S. home, while the American Immigration Council puts the number closer to 11 million. They work in every sector. From unskilled labor to tech companies like Uber, they fill vital roles that, once emptied, will likely impact adjacent workforces. Not only that, but the cost of mass deportation won’t come cheap, and while federal agencies will oversee the effort, local law enforcement will do the heavy lifting.
The ACLU reports that some 500,000 Dreamers – undocumented children who have grown up as American citizens – will be returned to their family’s country of origin. Or that nearly 175,000 Ukrainian refugees will be sent back to a terrifying life they just escaped. And that’s not factoring those from countries like Afghanistan, Myanmar, and any other number of war-torn countries whose victims have sought safety within our borders. And as Navarro reminds those who are just as confused by the turnout as she is, “This is what the country voted for.” But the human consequences have yet to be seen. What these deportations mean, as Navarro continues, “is grandmothers, what it means is brothers and aunts. What it means is abuelos y abuelas. It means Dreamers, it means your family members, it means your colleagues, it means your friends.” We’ve put these decisions in the hands of men who have shown time and time again they view others as less-than – and the last time an Other-obsessed regime rounded up a group they saw as subhuman, very few made it out alive.