President Donald Trump's deportation force has its place in America based on his election "mandate," according to League of United Latin American Citizens CEO Juan Proaño on Newsmax.
But the LULAC chief objects to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's "blatant abuse" and collateral damage of deporting illegals who are dutifully serving the American economy.
"We actually advocate for common-sense immigration reform, and we support Trump's position of stemming the flow of immigration at the border," Proaño, who leads the oldest Latino civil rights organization that was founded in 1929, told Monday's "Rob Schmitt Tonight." "We support that. We support deportation of immigrants who have serious criminal records. We support that as well.
"What we don't support is just the blatant abuse, when you're going into some of these cities and conducting raids at your Home Depots, local restaurants, and small businesses, and really destroying the fabric of what are some local economies that rely on these workers in order to provide services and keep this economy moving."
Trump's border czar Tom Homan has long warned those that do not self-deport or work to obstruct ICE enforcement are positioning themselves to be collateral damage in deportation efforts to rid the U.S. streets of violent criminals first.
"The president won with a mandate," Proaño said. "You know, he won the popular vote. He won the electoral vote. And he campaigned, obviously, on deporting millions of immigrants.
"But he also said that he was going to deport criminals as well. And what we have seen is that they're deporting effectively anyone that they can pick up: Mothers, young, you know, 19, 18, 17-year-olds.
"He's even deporting immigrants who have U.S.-born children and deporting them as a unit... effectively moving U.S.-born citizens out of this country with their families when that's not necessarily what he campaigned on."
Proaño went on to praise former President Barack Obama's mass deportation force's success, while ignoring former President Joe Biden's creating the problem Trump's deportation force intends to solve.
"Every country needs to have, obviously, you know, an immigration process; our country is no different than those, but I think, you know, the mismatch here is in the rhetoric and what he is saying he's going to do and what he's actually doing," Proaño told host Rob Schmitt. "So, for example, Barack Obama, he deported 3.1 million people during his administration, right?
"I think we all are in agreement on that. But 90% of those people by 2016 actually had serious criminal records. So he did the same amount of work. He was actually even more successful than President Trump, but he actually was successful deporting people with criminal records. And that really is where the pushback is coming from."
Proaño argued the U.S. economy needs the cheap labor of illegal migrant workers in meat packaging, farming, and construction.
"Look, the president has done a really great job; he has a populist message; clearly, there's a lot of support, but I will tell you this: We have gotten calls from red states in Nebraska," he continued. "We were there three weeks ago in Evansville, where they literally – the Republican mayor there, the elected officials were there asking us to help them stop the planes that were taking their workers away at the meatpacking plants.
"That economy will be destroyed if that type of policy continues. It needs to be moderated, there needs to be a conversation, and we're open and willing to have that conversation with the president, with [DHS Secretary Kristi] Noem, with Homan, and [acting ICE Director Todd] Lyons."
Cheap illegal migrant labor should not be deported Proaño concluded, because Americans will not do that work.
"They're not going to do the agricultural jobs," he said. "They're not going to go out on the farm fields in California and do that."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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