Senate debates Trump’s deportation plans

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:mass deportations.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump said if elected he would fix the border and remove large numbers of people in the US illegally.

Those promises have been met with support and skepticism on Capitol Hill.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: On Tuesday, Senators heard testimony about the prospect of ordering removal of illegal immigrants who don’t qualify for asylum.

What might these policies mean for everyday Americans?

Here’s Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Senate Democrats have concerns about how wide the Trump administration’s net for deporting immigrants might be…and held Tuesday’s hearing to probe the question.

DURBIN: Thirteen million undocumented immigrants live in our country. Most have been here for a long period of time. They are healthcare workers, teachers, farm workers, small business owners.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Democrat majority called three witnesses: an immigration expert, a former military official, and a prosecutor living in Philadelphia…who was born in Sierra Leone.

DURBIN: Mr. Turay, are you undocumented?

TURAY: Yes, Senator.

DURBIN: And why are you undocumented?

TURAY: I came here from civil unrest. I had no choice…my mom told me the story when I was trying to get my driver’s license.

DURBIN: How old were you when you came?

TURAY: I was seven years old.

Foday Turay has legal status to work thanks to DACA the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

President-elect Trump has not yet released specific plans for mass deportations leaving some fearing that people like Turay could be on the list. Here’s California Senator Alex Padilla.

PADILLA: Dreamers, as you all know, young people who were brought here by their parents at a very young age, but have grown up here and are undocumented. Are they also on the target list for deportation?

But Republican Senator Thom Tillis told WORLD that the Democrats’ focus on Dreamers distracts from the bigger issues.

TILLIS: This hearing was really portrayed to get people an idea that his first priority was going to be dreamers and DACA recipients. We know it's not that. It's actually cutting into the millions of people that came into the Biden administration and they're flooding the zone.

South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham is the leading Republican on the Judiciary Committee and he addressed who should be concerned.

GRAHAM: If you're a criminal, we're coming after you first. If you've been paroled illegally, we're not going to give you the roots to attach yourself to our country, because you should not have been here in the first place. As to the Dreamers, hopefully we can find a solution to that problem.

On Sunday, Trump told Meet the Press host Kristen Welker that he’s willing to work with Democrats in Congress on a plan for Dreamers.

TRUMP: And we're going to have to do something with them and—

WELKER: You want them to be able to stay, that's what you're saying?

TRUMP: I do, I want to be able to work something out and it should have been able to be worked out over the last three or four years. And it never got worked out.

Outside the Senate hearing room on Tuesday, Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii told WORLD that she’s waiting to see if Trump follows through on his statements.

HIRONO: I'm glad to hear him say that he's so willing to do something about DACA, but I also remember that when he first got elected, he said, "Bring me a bipartisan DACA bill. I will sign it." And he did not sign it, even if there were at least two DACA bills that have been presented to him.

Republicans on the committee called two witnesses an immigration expert, and a Maryland mother named Patty Morin . An illegal immigrant from El Salvador with an extensive criminal record has been charged with killing Morin’s 37-year-old daughter Rachel last year.

MORIN: If they had done a DNA swab the three times they encountered this person that's allegedly accused of killing my daughter, they would have known that he had an Interpol warrant for murder in his country.

Senator Graham blamed the Biden administration for misusing its power to parole people taken into custody after illegally crossing into the United States. He cited the murder of Georgia college student Laken Riley earlier this year. An illegal immigrant was sentenced to life without parole last month for Riley’s death.

GRAHAM: The man who's been convicted of killing Laken Riley was paroled into the country because there was no bed space. There's nothing in the statute that allows parole because we have no place to put you.

Republicans acknowledged that the majority of asylum-seekers are looking for economic opportunity in the United States. But they argue that failing to enforce immigration law has incentivized unsustainable numbers of applicants. Here’s committee witness Art Arthur, from the Center for Immigration Studies testifying for the GOP.

ARTHUR: The number of cases pending before the immigration courts is nearly tripled in the past five fiscal years and that's after 700,000 cases involving punitively removable aliens were terminated, dismissed, or closed.

Both sides said the price tag could be high - whether the government deports hundreds of thousands of people or continues to allow hundreds of thousands to enter the country on shaky asylum claims. Senators also worried that the military is ill equipped to carry out deportations if that is part of Trump’s plan. For Patty Morin, responsibility for fixing the problem rests on lawmakers.

MORIN: I do understand the economics that everyone is talking about. I do understand the military position but I think that you should put American citizens first. We, the people, have put you, the people, into office. And you should be doing everything you can to protect us.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

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