Imagine that you are a TSA agent. You are a middle aged white male and you voted for Trump. And now you are at work at the airport and you are flooded with demonstrators protesting Trump’s travel ban, yowling at you and clogging up the lines. There is general mayhem in all directions. Or you are an immigration agent. You are a Latina female and you also voted for Trump (hard to believe but possible). You are at work too. You can sense the overall disturbance in the airport field with angry people stewing about.
In comes a “refugee” scientist who is trying to get through immigration and get to MIT. And you have to detain, and subsequently deport him. He isn’t happy. And then about two minutes later, in comes a graduate student “refugee” from Iraq who is trying to get back to Yale. You have to detain and possibly deport her. She isn’t happy. There is a long line of non-resident passengers waiting to come through immigration, and there is a good chance there will be at least a few you will have to detain and maybe deport. I imagine if you were either of these folks, you might be having second thoughts about your presidential vote right about now!!
Then you hear that a federal judge has granted a stay for valid visa-holders to remain in the US and the US Department of Homeland Security has said that it will comply with judicial orders not to deport detained travels affected by Trump’s ‘’seismic” move to ban more than 130 people from entering the U.S. You don’t have to deport visa holders any more. You are elated because you weren’t too happy detaining those two Iraqis with ties to the US military. Then you hear that Homeland Security now says that they are in full compliance with the administration’s travel ban on “refugees” from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. Huh? So which is it?
So, finally, after a long, trying day, you go home and watch the evening news and hear about Trump’s comment to the media – “It’s [Immigration ban] working out very nicely. You see it at the airports. You see if all over. Its working out very nicely and we’re going to have a very very strict ban . . . we should have been doing this for years ” You sit there stunned – “Is he kidding? WTF?”
Maybe, some people might think, that it’s true we should have been doing this for years. We could maybe even stretch that far. However, then we would need to be vetting everyone!! Not just those from Muslim countries. But to put it in place overnight? With no person power to handle the detentions, the vetting, the paperwork, the traffic jams, and the deportations? Argh!!