theunitofcaring:

Something obvious that is inexplicably missing from a lot of the immigration debate: ‘law and order’ does not imply ‘deport people in the country illegally whenever you get a chance’. 

Because if the more than ten million immigrants that applies to know that you’re going to do that, they will never report crimes that are committed against them, they will never be able to come forward about crimes that they know are ongoing, and everyone else will know that they can commit crimes against that segment of the population and expect them not to go to the police. 

If you are genuinely concerned with law and order, creating an enormous population of people who cannot ever interact with law enforcement at all without being deported will be absolutely catastrophic. You’ll damage the capacity of your detectives to solve crimes, you’ll make it less likely crimes are even reported in the first place, and you’ll make it possible for people to, say, violently abuse a partner and get away with it by threatening to report them to ICE if they leave or complain. 

A government that was genuinely concerned with law and order would shelter these people from deportation. More than that, it would loudly and openly commit to continuing to shelter them from deportation. As long as it’s obvious that this concern isn’t a priority to the administration and that they don’t really care very much about it, the silencing effect already happens, because someone can’t risk coming forward now and then being tracked down for it in a year once the law has changed. This is a serious and very steep cost of an anti-immigration president that was imposed as soon as it seemed like he might win, got worse when he does win, and could only be rectified by a clear and open commitment to preventing it, which we will never get.