Donald Trump foreshadows deportation plan during Republican debate
Nov 11, 2015, 5:52 AM | Updated: 8:37 am
(AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Donald Trump triples down on deportation.
During last night’s Republican debate, Donald Trump finally unveiled — in prime time — his specific plan for deporting millions of immigrants.
“Lemme just tell you, Dwight Eisenhower, good president, moved a million-and-a-half illegal immigrants out of this country … they never came back,” Trump said.
A couple of his opponents implied he was making stuff up again, but he wasn’t. Eisenhower did indeed use the military to remove about 1.3 million Mexicans.
“I think there are many takeaways from [the operation], which was the fall of 1954,” University of Pennsylvania researcher Adam Goodman said.
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The operation Trump’s referring to was called “Operation Wetback,” and according Goodman, it used a variety of methods to remove those 1.3 million people.
“It was these mixed-methods that were used,” Goodman explained. “The formal deportations, voluntary departures and fear campaigns.”
Mexicans were told either you leave voluntarily, or we put you on a train and send you to a place with no running water.
“It was bare land, we had no living quarters, no running water…” one deported man explained.
So that’s how it would work. Unless, as Goodman noted in his talk, some of the 11 million people you’re trying to deport launch an organizing effort.
“If there was some kind of organizing effort, in which people that had been apprehended decided to band together and say ‘I’m going to stay and try to fight my case,’ then the system would break and I don’t know what would happen,” Goodman said.
We may find out.