Trump’s use of the term deportation

Question

Trump promises "to launch the largest deportation operation" in history? You Tube - CBS News

There is a debate currently in Italy on the use of the term “deportation” by Trump in a recent speech referring to illegal immigrants.

In some parts of Europe the term “deportation” is closely associated with the deportations of Jews during WWII to Nazi concentration camps. So the use of the term has been very badly received.

I guess that “deportation” has less historical and political connotations in the USA. Am I right? or is Trump using such a strong term deliberately to convey a muscular but outrageous image to his electorate?

Answer 1

"Deportation" is a legal term of art in US immigration law.

There is a federal statutory provision for "orders of deportation." The term deportation is also used by US federal agencies to describe the process of removing someone from the country, see for example usa.gov and ice.gov. So it is a normal term to use to describe the legal processes for removing a person from the US.

The term "deportation" is also used as the question suggests in reference to the Holocaust, for example from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (italics added). However, at least in my experience the term does not have that connotation absent context.

Physical Displacement. Perpetrators used forced emigration, resettlement, expulsion, deportation, and ghettoization to physically displace Jewish individuals and communities.

Answer 2

The World War II context was forcibly removing people (or imprisoning them) on the basis of their lineage alone (i.e. Germany and non-aryan races). The term in America used currently almost always refers to taking people who have no legal right to be in the US and sending them back to their country of origin.

That is consistent with what Trump says in a recent interview For the sake of brevity, I have cherry picked parts to form a concise view. The full quotes ramble at length (as is Trump's wont).

We will be using local law enforcement. And we will absolutely start with the criminals that are coming in.

It would [involve using the military]. When we talk military, generally speaking, I talk National Guard.

But if I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military, per se. We have to have safety in our country. We have to have law and order in our country. And whichever gets us there, but I think the National Guard will do the job.

We wouldn't have to [build new migrant detention camps]. Because we'll be bringing them out of the country. We're not leaving them in the country. We're bringing them out. It’s been done before.

But there wouldn't be that much of a need for [migrant detention camps], because of the fact that we're going to be moving them out. We're going to bring them back from where they came.

Answer 3

I think that this question is based on a misconception. The word "deportation" is not loaded in this way in English, it's not a question of European vs. American.

It's certainly true that the equivalent word is loaded in German, which is why the AfD reacted to their plans being described as "deportation" and insisted that their "Remigration" plan shouldn't be called that (link in German), but the closest UK party to the AfD, Reform has the phrase "Immediate Deportation for Foreign Criminals" as one of their headline immigration policies in their manifesto. Nor is it only the extreme parties using this language, the Conservatives manifesto boasts of having "deported over 18,000 foreign national offenders".

Deportation in English is simply the process of removing people who do not have a right to be in the country. Whilst the politics around such removals is certainly fraught, the word itself does not carry the baggage stated in the question. Comments from other posters suggest that this is also true in many other European languages, but I can only comment on those I understand to a decent degree.

Answer 4

The term 'deportation' means the identification, detention, and removal of non-citizens from a nation (as opposed to the removal goods or objects, which is covered by the term 'exportation'). Every country has a procedure for deporting people, and most Western nations have established legal processes to determine who should and should not be subject to deportation. Historically, the US has had loose rules for immigration, particularly for those who enter the country for labor rather than seeking a citizenship path, but Trumpism (like nationalist movements generally) is expressly anti-immigrant, and so an increase in deportation-language is probably to be expected.

The problem with Trump's speech isn't the term 'deportation' per se, but with the explicit ideation of large-scale indiscriminate deportation. This is what begins to stir up images of people crammed into railroad cattle-cars and shipped to concentration camps for 'processing' and 'relocation'. Mass deportation of this sort — as the Nazis discovered trying to move Jews, Gypsies, and Communists, and the Ottomans discovered trying to relocate Armenians — is extremely cost-inefficient. People being relocated cannot produce anything of value, but must be housed, fed, clothed, provided medical care, guarded, and constrained until the moment they are sent from the territory, assuming the state can fond a foreign nation willing to repatriate them. The more people being deported, the greater the cost, and the greater the difficulties with repatriation. This invariably leads to cost-cutting and cost-recovery efforts, such as limitations on or rationing of food, shelter, water, and other necessities, sub-par medical care, overcrowding, or even the expropriation of any wealth the deported people might have or the implementation of forced labor to cover costs. In turn, these measure, lead to increases in disease, exposure, malnutrition, exhaustion, and violence in both detainees and overworked guards. Mass deportation efforts invariably carry a significant death toll, whether or not the deporting administration has any specific plan for inflicting death. The general fear is that if Trump implements this plan he will (wittingly or not) stumble his way into something like a genocide.

Argue the legalities of it anyway you like; if it happens it will be ugly.

Answer 5

During the June 29 presidential debate, Trump claimed there were 18 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. One of the two former Trump officials said it could be as high as 30 million.

https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/mass-deportation-migrants-trump-actually-work-rcna161637

During World War II, people were often forcibly removed or imprisoned solely because of their ethnicity. In the current American context, the term typically refers to the action of sending individuals who lack legal right to be in the US back to their country of origin.

So the meaning and context is wholly different. Even in the article above, you see we're mostly deporting people so as to not compel other people to do the same, and it has little to do with their ethnicity.

Answer 6

Yeah, "deportation" is an fairly routine affair...

Deportation is the process of removing a noncitizen from the U.S. for violating immigration law.

... but also the name of a crime under the Nuremberg Tribunal statutes and thereafter. It all depends on the context. The latter is sometimes prefixed with "the crime of", to make the distinction more clear. About the latter, the UN e.g. says:

What are the crimes of deportation and forcible transfer?

Forcing people, by expulsion or other coercive acts, to leave a place where they are living lawfully for reasons not allowed by international law could be a crime against humanity, a war crime or both.

When people are displaced across an international border, it is called deportation. [...]

Emphasis on "living lawfully" mine.

It's not different than other context-dependent legal issues. Shooting someone can be self-dense. Or can be murder.

Answer 7

As other answers have suggested, this is just a difference between US English and UK/European English.

To an American, “deportation” is no more loaded a term than “fine”, “imprisonment”, or “execution”. It’s a just and legal punishment if you deserve it and have been duly convicted and sentenced; if not, not.

Strangely, the word “confiscation” is stigmatized. Yes, property can be confiscated after due process of law, but the word by itself and undecorated suggests injustice.