A quote that stook out to me during this week’s readings was from The Conversation: “I will come back – legally, if possible. If not, I’ll just walk across again.” I think this quote captures the situation that the U.S. faces: there will be no long-term solution to the influx of migrants if the U.S. does not either create avenues to legally migrate or address issues in the sending countries. This lesson applies to both Biden’s current Executive Order, as Blitzer argues, and Trump’s proposed policy.

I’m curious to know what people’s reactions were to the article written by Burgess. To me, I got the impression that Burgess believed that Trump’s policies not only would not work, but could not reasonably be implemented. Under the section with the subheading “Real lessons” she outlines some of those reasons. To me it seemed like the subtext of what she was arguing was that Trump’s plans were a non-reality.

I appreciated that the second article from the Center for Migration Studies highlighted that Trump’s plans of mass deportation can lead to a domestic public health crisis—in that, mixed status families or those who are undocumented will likely not report crime to the police for fear of deportation. As Burgess highlighted, most undocumented immigrants are concentrated in cities. Some of the areas highlighted by Pew Research Center (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/03/11/us-metro-areas-unauthorized-immigrants/) are areas in which interpersonal violence is particularly high (https://www.americanviolence.org/map?compChartType=differenceChart&compare=none&crimeType=400&customCompareInterval&customTimespanInterval&metric=total&precision=monthly&selectedCensusTractsIds&selectedCitiesIds&sortColumn=name&sortPage=0&sortReversed=false&timespan=lastMonth). Given this, the harm of giving police the authority to deport/report undocumented immigrants extends well beyond the people who are the “subjects” of this proposed policy. But beyond whether the actual policy is implemented, the significant harm that misinformation about this topic could cause is important to highlight. The fact that this has been proposed as a policy option, means that if Trump takes office (or even if he doesn’t) some people may believe that they can or will be deported by the police and thus may try to mitigate their interactions with or reliance on the police.

Trump’s comments about enlisting the police to deport undocumented immigrants made me wonder about school resource officers. Specifically, if police officers at schools are allowed to deport/report undocumented immigrants, who are entitled to attend public school under Plyler v. Doe, students—and the parents/relatives that interact with the school—face barriers to their education.

The economic and fiscal contributions of unauthorized workers that the Center for Migration Studies highlighted was another point that stood out to me. My journalist project last semester involved looking at healthcare in New Jersey, and many of the families that I interviewed privately relied on workers whose status was unclear because of the cost of healthcare. I feel as though oftentimes big words like “immigration policy” feel disconnected from Princeton, but it’s important to realize that we are also proximate to these policies and are deeply affected by them.