Earlier: Trump: Operation Wetback 2 Is Coming

In typical Trumpian fashion, Donald Trump has promised, once again, what he did not do during his first term, mass public deportation of large numbers of illegal aliens, an Operation Wetback II. Then it was a deportation force. It appeared that Donald Trump did not know that there was already a Federal agency, in fact, three Federal agencies, the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Victims Unit (ICE SVU), and ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ICE ERO). But even with three components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there was no Operation Wetback II instituted. At first, ICE ERO started, half-heartedly, making arrests. The USBP was already busy at the border, but was not assigned, for some strange reason, to resume interior enforcement like Area Control and City Patrol, and ICE SVU just told President Trump to f**k off [ICE SVU Insubordinate Leadership Attacks Trump, Washington Post, June 29, 2018].

I advised President Trump what options he had and how he could force the bureaucracy to implement mass deportations, but he did not listen [President Trump Will Have Foes In Immigration Bureaucracy—But Also Friends. They Can Help Him Win, April 25, 2016]. The result was that there was no significant change in either deportations from the interior. Most was due to Deep State saboteurs like Lady DACA, Elaine Duke, Ladyboy DACA, and John Kelly. Trump is, of course, responsible for those whom he appointed to serve him, but the saboteurs also exploited his ignorance of how the bureaucracies actually work, or not work.

But then, and more importantly now, there is another problem with implementing Operation Wetback II. The original Operation Wetback was implemented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower after appointing a head of the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with the intent of circumventing corruption, incompetence, and sabotage by the entrenched bureaucrats, the INS District Directors (DD), the highest level of manager in the field for the INS. On the borders, DDs directed all interior enforcement, either by Border Patrol Agents (BPA) or INS Special Agents (SA) and Deportation Officers (DO).

President Eisenhower appointed Jumpin’ Joe Swing, a fellow U.S. Army general, to head the INS, clean out the corruption, and conduct a program of mass deportation of illegal aliens, Operation Wetback. However, Operation Wetback had a significant advantage that President Trump’s plan for an Operation Wetback II does not have, the legal climate to actually conduct mass deportations of illegal aliens without interference from Federal kritarchs and from the legal appeals process that illegal aliens now enjoy, a legal process that was unavailable to them in the 1950s, in fact, anytime before 1983 there was essentially no appellate system for illegal aliens outside of an administrative system only used at the discretion of the Service.

After 1983, an at first extra-legal system was created by mere administrative imposition by the Attorney General, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), then by statutory acquiescence by Congress to whole rotten system, with the result being that a monster was created that effectively prevents the large-scale deportation of illegal aliens, with each deportation being an extended exercise in multiple appeals to the EOIR and the Federal courts. All quite the opposite of what happened in the 1950s: the expeditious identification, arrest, and deportation of over 1 million illegal aliens in as little as a year, with millions more frightened into leaving on their own accord, self-deportation.

With kritarchy, both from the Federal bench and the EOIR, there is no chance of an Operation Wetback II, unless Donald Trump will be the new Andrew Jackson, ignoring any court orders thwarting mass roundups and deportation of illegal aliens.

Or a newly reelected President Trump taking the necessary action to obtain statutory changes to the current system, abolishing the EOIR and prohibiting review of deportation orders by the Federal kritarchy. That will be difficult, though recommended, for the Constitution grants authority over immigration to the Article I power, Congress. Only a statute can guarantee that administrative and judicial sabotage is prevented. And the course is to expand Expedited Removal to all aliens other than Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR), green card holders.

Donald Trump needs to buckle down, though. He needs more than rhetoric. He needs to build the public case for abolishing the convoluted appeals process that has millions of illegal aliens in an appeals system and he needs to take the action he can to force the bureaucracy to get into the field and make arrests, lots of arrests. He did it before, but statutory changes are needed to enable an Operation Wetback II. Sabotage will happen again, and Trump needs to be ready on the administrative side, as it will be more than the kritarchs resisting his demands for more arrests.