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HOW REFUSING TO VOTE FOR HARRIS COULD BRING MASS IMMIGRANT
DEPORTATIONS TO AMERICA  
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Harold Meyerson
October 31, 2024
American Prospect
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_ Justifiable fury at the loss of innocent lives in Gaza shouldn’t
lead to the destruction of millions of innocent lives here at home. _

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents transfer an immigrant
after an early-morning raid in Duarte, California, June 6, 2022,
Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo

 

With polls showing that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are running
even in nearly every swing state, this election will turn on the
decisions of very small subsets of voters. One of those subsets surely
isn’t contemplating voting for Trump, but may end up electing him
anyway.

I refer to those voters so understandably appalled by Israel’s war
on Gaza and the toll it’s taken in innocent lives that they may not
vote, or vote for Jill Stein, as a way of protesting the Biden
administration’s continued provision of arms for Netanyahu’s war,
and Harris’s refusal to cleanly break with that policy.

It’s by no means clear how not voting for Harris will stop
Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the attendant slaughter of innocent
lives. It is perfectly clear, however, that it will imperil millions
of innocent lives right here in the USA should it lead to a Trump
victory.

I refer to the immigrants among us whose forced deportation is the
fundamental plank in Trump’s platform, the one issue he stresses in
every one of his otherwise disjointed speeches, the _sine qua
non_ of his pledge to make America great again. To accomplish that
deportation, he’s made clear he’d order the National Guard to
sweep through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, and might well order the
Army to clear out areas like the Bronx, East Los Angeles, and
Chicago’s West Side as well.

The government’s count of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is
roughly 11 million, but Trump and JD Vance routinely inflate that
number to 20 million or more. And even in the very, very, very
unlikely event that deportations are confined just to the truly
undocumented, they would still separate immigrant parents from citizen
children, and banish Dreamers—undocumented immigrants brought here
as children by their parents—to countries that are utterly alien to
them. At minimum, the process will destroy hundreds of thousands of
families and devastate entire communities. The toll in innocent
lives—not killed, but effectively crippled—will be huge.

And this is the most predictable consequence of a Trump victory. His
demonization of immigrants is the central message of his campaign, and
a campaign (inevitably entailing some violence) to deport them follows
as the night the day.

I don’t doubt that those campaigns will meet serious resistance in
our cities, as those opposed to them will take to the streets in very
large numbers. I also don’t doubt that the ranks of those
demonstrators will include some of those whose opposition to the U.S.
military aid that has enabled Israel’s war on Palestinians impelled
them not to vote for Kamala. After all, if they’ve refused to vote
for Harris due to their revulsion and rage at the loss of innocent
lives, the assault on immigrants will likely lead them to feel
comparable revulsion and rage.

It’s by no means clear, however, that those imperiled immigrants
will welcome those Harris-abstainers to the ranks of their supporters.
They may reason—actually, they almost surely _will _reason—that
progressives who didn’t vote for Harris didn’t think that the
innocent lives of the immigrants among them mattered very much. Some
of them might even conclude that those Harris-refuseniks didn’t give
a flying fuck about them.

This is something that voters infuriated by U.S. Gaza policy and still
wrestling with how to vote might want to think about. 

_Harold Meyerson is editor at large of The American Prospect._

_The American Prospect is devoted to promoting informed discussion on
public policy from a progressive perspective. In print and online,
the Prospect brings a narrative, journalistic approach to complex
issues, addressing the policy alternatives and the politics necessary
to create good legislation. We help to dispel myths, challenge
conventional wisdom, and expand the dialogue. American Prospect,
Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation headquartered in
Washington, D.C. You can support our mission with a subscription or a
tax-deductible donation._

* Immigration
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* deportations
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* Donald Trump
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* Gaza
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* presidential election
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