The New York Times continued to paint Republicans as the extremists on the immigration issue, even when it’s the Democratic Party who seems eager to welcome a surge of migrants and perhaps even give them the vote.
The online headline over the story by Nicholas Nehamas and Eileen Sullivan didn’t even nod toward objectivity: “With Unrealistic Immigration Proposals, DeSantis and Trump Try to Outdo Each Other.”
Campaign reporter Nehamas is notoriously hostile to DeSantis, and Sullivan‘s previous misleading reporting captures her siding with illegal immigrants, so this anti-DeSantis screed comes as no surprise.
As a presidential candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has said he would authorize the use of deadly force against people crossing the border, seek to end the practice of birthright citizenship and send the military to strike against drug cartels inside Mexico, a key ally of the United States, even without the permission of its government.
Those positions put him on the hard right among the Republicans running for president, many of whom are tapping into deep anger among G.O.P. primary voters over immigration.
Now, Mr. DeSantis, who often tries to stoke outrage with his border policies, has unveiled another extreme position: deporting all undocumented immigrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration.
The Times piled on details to make it seem an impossible mission to enforce U.S. law, making the unbearable status quo, which is causing protests in even liberal New York City, seem inevitable.
Conducting so many deportations would require Mr. DeSantis to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, authorize widespread raids into immigrant communities, significantly expand immigration detention space to meet national standards and substantially grow the fleet of airplanes used for deportations. Billions more dollars would need to be spent on bolstering immigration courts to adjudicate cases within months instead of years. Currently, some migrants who have recently arrived in the United States have been given court dates a decade from now because the immigration court backlog is so large.
The Times was awfully casual in its sub rosa confession that U.S. officials don’t know how many people have entered the country illegally.
….Officials estimate about 1.5 million others have entered the country illegally without being detained.
Mass deportations are not as simple as the Republican contenders make them sound.
Many of the people they call illegal immigrants are eligible for legal status in the United States or are already here on a legal status. An example of a legal status is Temporary Protected Status, the humanitarian benefit Mr. Biden just extended to nearly 500,000 Venezuelans who have come to the country since the spring of 2021….
In other words, the Biden administration made it harder. Massive illegal immigration is matched with “humanitarian benefits.”
The reporters tried to employ a hypocritical “gotcha” tactic, going back over a decade to the second Bush administration (a presidency the Times didn’t exactly support at the time):
When Republicans tried to enact comprehensive immigration reform under President George W. Bush, the idea of deporting large numbers of undocumented people was not considered realistic or desirable, reflecting how deeply the political mood in the G.O.P. has shifted in the years since.
“Mass deportation is not a workable solution,” the Bush administration argued in a 2007 fact sheet, at a time when the population of unauthorized immigrants was even higher than it is today. “Deporting the millions of illegal immigrants who are already in the country would be impractical, harmful to our economy, and potentially devastating to families with deep roots in their communities.”
Or perhaps the immigration problem is worsening under a Biden presidency with no interest in solving it?