The United States leads the developed world in the number of immigrants, around 50 million, with the undocumented at 11 million, for an overall 20 percent of the population, Bruno Venditti reported in Visual Capitalist last December. Many came from countries which were destabilized as the U.S. – and other Western powers – pursued economic, security and imperialist imperatives.

By comparison, Germany has around 15.8 million immigrants, 650,000 of them undocumented, making up just 4 percent of its population. In the United Kingdom, the comparable numbers are 9.4 million, 674,000, and 7 percent; France, 8.5 million, 250,000, 3 percent; Canada, eight million, 260,000, 3 percent; Italy, 6.4 million, 458,000, 7 percent; Spain, 6.8 million, 430,000, 6 percent; Netherlands, 2.4 million, 40,000, 2 percent; Poland, 817,000, 19,000, 2 percent.

It is understandable, therefore, why President Donald Trump declared war on undocumented immigration. He made it his chief campaign pitch for last November’s election and is following up, as promised, with probably the most draconian policy to deal with what is an obvious emergency. However, the policy, and especially the way it is being enacted, does not do honor the nation.

The problem started before the election. While there was enough evidence for declaring an emergency, the president and some of his top allies, including James David (JD) Vance, whom he later tapped as his running mate and eventual vice president, and top immigration adviser Stephen Miller, have resorted to unnecessarily inflammatory rhetoric, including questionable claims.

The most glaring falsehoods included that Haitian migrants were eating neighbors’ pets in an Ohio town, that Venezuelan gangsters had seized control of a Colorado apartment complex and that undocumented migrants as a whole are criminals and rapists. That sort of inaccuracy has been running through the deportation program and generating criticism where there should be little of it.

It seems, also, that, in the haste to pursue the president’s policy to deport all undocumented migrants, the administration has been paying little regard to their rights – even of those who are lawfully in the country. Mistakes will obviously be made in the massive deportation undertaking which Trump launched on his first days back in office. But rather than acknowledging them, the reaction has included a level of arrogance that comes only with being power drunk.

In addition, the administration has been applying highly dubious legal rationales for some of its actions, such as invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and determining that some speech, such as support for Palestinians, constitutes grounds for removal without due process. This is compounded by the fact that the administration has deemed as hostile, and political, dozens of rulings by federal judges, some appointed by the president, declaring some actions as illegal and even ignoring some of them. The only explanation has to be that the administration wants to show that its promised rapid deportation is taking place.

This has led to some unfortunate situations, such as deportation of the parents of a 2-year-old, the mother to Venezuela, the father to a notorious prison in El Salvador, with the girl being placed in foster care in the U.S, The New York Times reported. The couple, who lived in the country since May 2024, was deported because their tattoos were interpreted to mean that they belonged to a Venezuelan gang, relatives told The Times.

However, the mother’s tattoos “include her parents’ birth years inscribed on her neck, as well as a lightning bolt, a small flame and a serpent,” her mother told The Times. The father’s tattoos “include the cartoon characters Yosemite Sam and Marvin the Martian, a cross, a crown and a compass with a plane,” based on a statement he gave to immigration officials, The Times added. Also, at least a few children who are United States citizens have been deported.

The administration “is not only intensifying immigration enforcement against unauthorized immigrants, as promised during the presidential campaign, but has also enacted sweeping measures that are deeply affecting legal immigrants – as many as four million people,” The Miami Herald reported, citing estimates from the non-partisan think tank the Migration Policy Institute. “The actions are undermining the sense of security of even temporary visa holders and green card holders who once felt (that) in the United States.”

As of July 21, last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) listed more than 660,000 non-citizens with criminal records, based on a letter which it sent to Congress last year, The Herald reported. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that more than 150,000 immigrants – whom she described as the “worst of the worst” – had been arrested. But not all fell into that category. “Many are asylum-seekers, individuals admitted at the U.S.-Mexico border while seeking refuge, recipients of humanitarian parole or even people with pending approved applications for temporary protection from deportation,” The Herald added.

The administration also encourages states to work in partnership with immigration officials in the crackdown. For example, Florida, under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, was among the first to sign up and require local police forces to cooperate. DeSantis and the Republican-dominated Legislature went further, enacting a law that  makes it illegal for undocumented migrants to travel to the state. A judge has blocked that move but state officials seem bent on ignoring the ruling. That in a state with the fourth highest number of migrants (22 percent) after California (27 percent) and New York (23 percent).

The president is also seeking to end temporary protection from deportation for 531,000 undocumented immigrants, 60 percent of whom have Latino background: 22 percent are Venezuelans, 20.7 percent are Cubans and 17.7 percent are Nicaraguans – groups that are believed to have helped Trump win in November. The rest are Haitians (39.6 percent), EguiBrito reported.

The administration is also ramping up efforts to build or expand facilities to hold the vast number of anticipated detainees – creating a potential billionaire bonanza for private prison companies. That is in addition to sending some deportees to El Salvador and the U.S. offshore naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba. That, too, has sparked lawsuits in which many judges have been siding with the plaintiffs.

The United States is not the first country to deport undocumented immigrants to foreign places but whether any should do so is another matter. Australia has become notorious for stopping refugees at sea and sending them to languish under what critics have described as inhumane conditions in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. The United Kingdon tried to send refugees to Rwanda, but courts took a dim view of that plan.

The president is also challenging citizenship for children who were born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants. The Constitution stipulates that anyone born in the country is automatically a citizen, but Trump is claiming that the clause applies only to children of residents lawfully in the country. The Supreme Court is being asked to rule on the matter and, given its composition of six conservatives and three liberals and its history of rulings on such issues, it may side with the administration.

Is all of this really necessary and should a great nation stoop to this sort of approach to deal with the problem? Millions of undocumented immigrants have been living in the U.S. for years. Many have raised families, bought homes, integrated into their communities, started businesses and paid billions of dollars in taxes. A humane immigration policy would acknowledge the important role such immigrants have been playing in the growth of the economy and enhancing the cultural diversity of the country and legalize their status.

It strengthens a nation, not weakens it, when its policy towards people from other countries treats them with dignity not one of the empire striking back, to borrow a “Star Wars” phrase, against a perceived “invasion,” but one which, with Christianity the dominant religion, embraces the parable of “The Good Samaritan.” Jesus did preach to followers to love “thy neighbor as thyself.”

Of course that would probably mean asking the Supreme Court to define “neighbor.”