Thread by @HMAesq

The anti-immigrant movement should really be called the deportation movement. that's what they're really about.

Think about how different the discourse would be if we were arguing about how to let people in instead of how to keep - and kick - them out.

Nearly seventy years ago, the Supreme Court described deportation as "a drastic punishment, and at times equivalent to banishment or exile." Finding the stakes to be high, it refused to read laws resulting in deportation broadly.

Since then, Congress has passed increasingly broad deportation laws. Long-term immigrants are deported for minor infractions to countries they never knew. Others who flee persecution are deported to their deaths. The machine sweeps up even some US citizens and immigrant veterans.

We incarcerate children in for-profit jails. The law now creates perverse incentives to remain in the US even if they want to leave and come back legally. The enforcement-first approach has been failing for decades, and its primary weapon is deportation. And still they come.

What the law used to recognize as strong medicine is now available over the counter. Don't like what someone says? Deport them! Don't like a religion? Deport it! How many civilizations have fallen after they fractured over such disagreements?

It's time to rethink deportation as a panacea - or even a prerequisite - toward rebuilding our immigration system.

Deportation is not well understood. It is not so automatic. It's not even necessarily permanent. Some due process has always applied to all people within the US.

The line between legal and illegal immigration status is not black and white. Many US citizens were once undocumented. Documented immigrants may lose status, only to to regain it. Others are ordered removed, but are granted limited relief that does not result in physical removal.

Removal proceedings require identification, apprehension and sometimes detention, often for months/years while hearings/appeals conclude. Even afterwards, physical removal from the US requires obtaining travel documents from the receiving country. It's not just "They're gone."

That so many get deported is more a comment on the due process they (didn't) receive rather than actual ineligibility to stay. Immigration judges have an average of 7 minutes to decide a case. Expansion of deportation will involve further loss of due process.

Moreover, deportation is not necessarily permanent. Deportees will fight tooth and nail to come back, despite stiff penalties for unlawful re-entry. It was the deportation of Central American gang members in the 1980's that caused their transnational growth.

And the heavy-handed enforcement-only rhetoric only risks providing fodder for those who openly express criminal intent against the United States. It's also hugely expensive - and for what purpose? Is there no other way to promote respect for the rule of law?

Obviously, any country has the right to expel undesirable people. But deportation has become the go-to instant cure not only for illegal immigration, but for any perceived social ill. When used like so much candy, the side effects become worse than the illness.

And when it's not used as directed, it can create more of the problem it purported to solve.

Unlawful entry is a Class I misdemeanor. The punishment should fit the crime.

Since actual legislated immigration reform is proving elusive, we must better use existing laws - parole, administrative closure, deferred action - to give people options short of deportation.

It's time to stop relying on it as a panacea.