Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan Named ‘Operation Aurora’

In an October rally in Colorado, President-elect Donald Trump unveiled the name for his mass deportation plan to crackdown on immigration: “Operation Aurora.” During his speech, Trump pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to carry out deportations for every undocumented immigrant who has been convicted of a violent crime.

The Alien Enemies Act law was the legal foundation for Japanese internment camps during World War II and gives the president power to detain non-citizens in wartimes. Trump called Aurora a “war zone” despite pushback from local leaders, claiming it has seen an influx of  violent Venezuelan gang members from Tren de Aragua.

Mike Coffman, Aurora’s Republican mayor, has since refuted claims he made suggesting on national television that several apartment complexes shuttered due to code violations had “fallen to these Venezuelan gangs.” Trump declared that “Operation Aurora” would focus on deporting undocumented immigrants who have gang ties; however, many local immigrants have concerns about how the new Trump administration will define said ties.

Aurora, aptly nicknamed “The World in a City,” is Colorado’s third-largest city and the most diverse in the Centennial State. Twenty percent of Aurora’s population was born outside of the U.S., including undocumented immigrants and naturalized citizens. Aurora has become home to many refugees and immigrants because of its affordable housing, good schools, and availability of work in a metro area.

Researchers have repeatedly found that immigrants, whether or not they are documented, don’t commit crimes at higher rates than U.S citizens. While there are victims of crime in Aurora, statistics show that the city has gotten safer over the last two years.

Trump claims that undocumented immigrants are stealing American jobs and therefore a threat to the U.S. economy, but that’s not exactly how the labor market works. Our economy is reliant on immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, as most immigrants work in jobs that U.S.-born people are not willing to work.

On top of that, a report from the American Immigration Council, a nonpartisan organization, shows that a mass deportation program would have a devastating impact on the economy, costing the U.S. a staggering $315 billion. The main costs of a mass deportation project would come from construction of detention camps to temporarily house undocumented migrants.

Photo courtesy of social media.