June 24, 2019 09:42 AM UTC

Trump Mass Deportation Threat Passes (For Now)

• 4 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

CBS4 Denver reports, while thousands of undocumented immigrants and immigration rights activists cautiously exhale–for a couple of weeks, anyway:

The planned ICE raids for Denver and 10 other cities on Sunday have been postponed for two weeks. Pres. Donald Trump tweeted the change of plans on Saturday afternoon.

Mr. Trump tweeted, “At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!”

The Denver Post’s Elise Schmelzer:

After the raids were postponed, activists berated the administration for terrorizing immigrant communities.

“We will not be lulled into a false sense of security by this new announcement, nor will we be driven to constant terror,” Jeanette Vizguerra, local immigration rights leader, said in a news release issued by the Colorado Rapid Response Network. “We will remain vigilant and ready to protect our rights and to protect each other.”

Denver7’s Lance Hernandez:

Immigrant activists say President Donald Trump’s tweet June 17, that “ICE will begin the process of removing millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” was meant to incite terror.

“We are disgusted by the administration and ICE’s glee in terrorizing immigrant families, leaving children crying and sick to their stomach with fear about what could happen to their parents,” said Ana Rodriguez, of the Colorado People’s Alliance. “We know that massive raids or not, ICE is ripping away our neighbors as collateral damage every single day and that we must continue to be ready to protect each other no matter what.”

This latest round of threats by President Donald Trump to take draconian action against undocumented immigrants followed a similar pattern to last week’s about-face on military action against Iran. After an initial vague threat to “remove millions” sent immigrant rights activists scrambling, news reports late last week forecast a much smaller roundup of immigrants who were already subject to deportation orders. In the end even this fairly routine operation was not carried out, and people who didn’t know if they would end the weekend incarcerated woke up in their beds to speculate about what comes next.

If you dislike undocumented immigrants enough to not care about them being subjected to capricious threats to short-circuit the legal process and deport them by the millions, this turn of events is probably fine with you. But even people who think border security is an important issue should agree that an orderly process is important for everyone involved. It doesn’t matter to Trump that the sudden removal of millions of people would be either a logistical nightmare or a humanitarian catastrophe (or both). This incident had the effect of turning the fears of millions of people of sudden arrest and deportation into a bargaining chip.

Call it what you want according to your conscience–but it’s not business as usual.