Immigration Lessons

Joshua Breisblatt has a post at Immigration Impact about lessons to take away from the Department of Homeland Security's most recent enforcement numbers. For example:

• The Obama administration has deported more people (about 2.7 million) than any other president in U.S. history. See my recent post on Obama's problematic immigration record.

• We have a serious refugee problem on the border, which was not the case when Obama took office. We're seeing fewer single men and Mexicans, and more families and Central Americans. We should start calling this a refugee crisis.

• Interior enforcement has finally started to differentiate between people who pose a public threat versus those who for any number of reasons deserve humanitarian consideration. This is one of the changes that will be vulnerable under the Trump administration.

Set aside the absurd debate over walls, fences, barriers, and who will pay for them. The critical problem is the degree to which the Trump administration views immigrants as a threat bloc, or is able to understand (or care) about the lived reality of the people they are rounding up. It took a while, but Obama was moving in that direction.