Hans von Spakovsky
“Illegals must go,” Tom Homan, the incoming Border Czar, has declared—and he and President-elect Trump mean that literally. Critics have a pat response: It is not physically or financially possible to implement the largest deportation program in our history. But they’re missing a critical tool: the ability of the entire executive branch to create conditions that will help induce self-deportation by many aliens.
Trump and Homan have already indicated that they’re going to focus the Department of Homeland Security’s resources on the worst-of-the-worst, in what we can call a “catch-and-deport” program, in contrast to the “catch-and-release-or-don’t-even-bother-to-catch” program of the past four years. Their top priority is aliens who pose national security threats, as well as the murderers, rapists, burglars, arsonists, thieves, gang members and other criminals that President Biden and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas have allowed to freely roam throughout the nation.
But many other illegal aliens can and should be removed by DHS. As a former immigration judge told me, just enforcing the estimated 1.3 million final-removal orders issued by immigration judges that have been piling up at the Department of Homeland Security—sitting there ignored by the current administration—would make a significant dent in the illegal alien population.
Because these are final orders after the aliens have gone through the immigration court system, no advocacy group has any legal basis for suing the new administration to stop the aliens from being picked up and deported.
These final deportation orders are like the “letters of transit” in the classic 1942 movie “Casablanca,” where Peter Lorre says they “cannot be rescinded, not even questioned.” Not only should DHS be enforcing these orders, but to the extent needed, other federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshalls Service, should be immediately directed by the president to help DHS agents to the extent needed. » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/border-security/commentary/what-everyone-missing-the-argument-over-mass-deportation