Everyone needs to stop, look at big picture

A wide assortment of issue advocates who oppose the president-elect have reacted to Donald Trump’s victory with emotions ranging from serious and legitimate concern to hysteria.

Organizations that advocate for immigrants in the country illegally are among those spreading fear that is unlikely to match reality.

Without question, Trump often spoke in harsh terms when discussing illegal immigration during both the primary and general elections.

In late August, after meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Trump seemed to sum up a view he would carry through election day by saying, “Only the out-of-touch media elites think the biggest problems facing American society today is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who don’t have legal status.”

He said he would have “zero tolerance” for those whose crimes extend beyond immigration violations. He also said he would create a “deportation task force” to deal with “the most dangerous criminal illegal immigrants.”

Considering that we already have a “deportation task force” known as ICE, the rhetoric sounds remarkably like the way President Obama has actually dealt with the issue — although one could hope Trump would be less likely to send mixed messages to desperate people in Central America who wind up risking everything to try to get into this country because they believe they’ll be able to stay.

And Trump might have trouble beating the current president’s all-time deportation record: According to ABC News and based on government data, between 2009 and 2015 the Obama administration removed from the United States more than 2.5 million people through immigration orders. That doesn’t include the number of people who “self-deported” or were turned away at the border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

In November 2014, Obama issued an executive action directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus on criminals, and so last year 91 percent of people removed from inside U.S. borders had been convicted of a crime. By comparison the George W. Bush administration, which was dealing with the nation’s most devastating domestic attack by foreign terrorists and two wars, removed about 2 million illegal immigrants over eight years.

So worries about federally approved goon squads going through neighborhoods, stopping people and asking to see their papers are wildly overblown. Those people who are in the country illegally but have managed to live without committing crimes under an Obama administration should be able to continue on the same path under a Trump administration.

Rather than encouraging others to live in a panic, perhaps everyone could take a deep breath and examine the totality of what Trump has said and the signals he has sent more recently.

Yes, it is flip flopping, but most candidates seem to back off their more extreme points made on the campaign trail.

And no president has the power to round up and deport people en masse, as fear mongers claim is about to happen.

— Albuquerque Journal