A Reason for Speedy Deportations — It Helps Aliens to Readjust Back Home

Bearing in mind published speculation that many Central Americans now flooding into South Texas will be years in deportation hearings, I recently read about a Lebanese national who has been an illegal in the United States for 20 years.

The Sixth Circuit in Abdelghani v. Holder ruled for the alien's removal after 11 years of court proceedings and two decades of illegal presence. I worry about somewhat similar delays with the current group of Central Americans, and pressures from the Left to keep them in this country.

I will return to the facts in Mr. A's case shortly — he richly deserves deportation — but one of my reactions had nothing to do with the nation's need to control its borders — it dealt with the impact of a 2014 deportation as opposed to a 1994 deportation on the same person, and how one could project that variable on those now arriving over the Lower Rio Grande.

I don't know if this approach has been mentioned before, but it struck me that it would have been much more humane to have sent him packing in 1994, rather than to do so 20 years later. He will have a much harder time coping with Lebanon now than he would have had coping with Lebanon shortly after he departed.

The place will have changed, many of his old friends and relatives will be dead or scattered, and he will be having to make a much more painful readjustment than he would have had to do years earlier. Further, he probably has become used to an American lifestyle that will no longer be available to him and, more importantly, he will have built-in American expectations that no longer apply.

He will, in short, be a fish seriously out of water when he returns to Lebanon, assuming that he is actually deported.

Further, in the 20 illegal years in America, he probably acquired friendships, perhaps a marriage (or two) and a child (or two or more) all of whom he will become separated from unless — and this sometimes happens — the spouse and children go to Lebanon with him. These relationships would never have come to pass had he been bounced in 1994.

What does Mr. A's 20-year-history suggest to us about how to deal with the current crisis?

Two quite different things: One, we need a substantial and immediate investment in courts, judges, deportation officers, and the like to get the illegals moving back to Central America as quickly as possible. This should be regarded as a long-term investment in preventing illegal immigration, and it will be costly. We did not do this with Mr. A. Secondly, we should manage the Central Americans while they are here humanely, but not so nicely that we start building up expectations about life in America. We should treat them only a little better than the home governments would have treated a similar illegal population. No TVs in the resettlement centers; no movies; no English instruction; nothing but working-class Central American food, such as beans and rice. Yes, schools, but Central American ones, with long hours, teaching nothing about the United States. All able-bodied prisoners would be expected, at no pay, to work in the camps. Kids should have to pitch in, too. Housing should be clean but sparse.

The implied message should be "We do not want you here and you are leaving shortly."

The custodians of the families and the children should be DOJ's Bureau of Prisons, not the Department of Health and Human Services, as it is now.

What I propose sounds harsh, but it is tough love, designed to make it easier for these Central Americans to readjust to their homeland when they get there, a much easier transition than the one that is facing Mr. A.

That person came to the United States in 1994 as a foreign student, never attended the college that caused his visa, and remained here illegally, and unnoticed by DHS until 2003, when the department moved to deport him. He kept losing his case in courts, and kept appealing, and kept filing motions to reopen (MTRs), and kept taking advantage of due process to postpone deportation, all the while building up American connections and expectations.

Mr. A is a negative role model for how we handle illegal aliens, and one we should bear in mind as we work with the influx into the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

His case in court was described in the June 23 issue of Interpreter Releases, the immigration bar's trade paper. For the court's file, in PACER, the federal courts' electronic records system, see Court of Appeals Docket # 12-4078.