By Dan Hart

As has become customary in modern America, the ongoing “debate” over illegal immigration and the Trump administration’s deportation policies never really turned into a debate — it quickly became two sides shouting past each other. But with the fate of roughly 15 million people illegally present in the U.S. hanging in the balance, the issue deserves a thoughtful and compassionate approach that combines common sense and justice.

Illegal immigration has been a massive can that has continually been kicked down the road by successive Congresses and administrations for three decades. As the focus on border security has ebbed and flowed depending on which political party has held power, the number of individuals entering the country illegally has steadily climbed. As the years have gone by, the ongoing question about how America should handle the presence of millions of unauthorized individuals who are otherwise living and working in a law-abiding fashion has gone unanswered.

By and large, the Democratic Party has supported a “wave them through” approach of minimal vetting at the border and quick approval of welfare benefits and even voting rights in order to bolster an electoral advantage amid the sagging American birth rate. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has consistently advocated for law and order and quick deportations at the border but has also thrown up its hands amid the Dems’ refusals to negotiate on legislation to address the millions of immigrants who have been living in the shadows of America for decades.

In the midst of the uncertainty, millions of illegal immigrants, mostly from Latin America and the Caribbean, have made their way into the U.S. interior. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of illegal immigrants present in the U.S. stood at 3.5 million in 1990, then proceeded to rapidly climb to over 12 million by 2007, before leveling off and declining to around 10 million by 2020.

That’s where things began to go haywire under the presidency of Joe Biden. Almost immediately upon taking office in January 2021, Biden began unwinding a series of Trump border security policies, including canceling the “remain in Mexico” policy, halting the construction of the border wall, vastly expanding access to “Temporary Protected Status,” and terminating over one million deportation cases. The resulting surge in illegal immigration reached a level never before seen over the next four years, as approximately 6.7 million individuals streamed over the border.

In the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election, the Trump campaign rightly hammered the Biden administration for its flagrant dereliction of duty at the border, which predictably resulted in a massive surge in child sex trafficking, drug trafficking, overdose deaths, and crime. Trump promised to secure the border once again and deport the criminals and gang members that had illegally entered the country. But then the former and future president went much further: he promised to deport every individual present in the U.S. illegally as part of a “mass deportation” plan — amounting to roughly 4% of the population of the country.

To the Trump administration’s great credit, it has indeed followed through on securing the border, with the U.S. Border Patrol recently announcing that 11 straight months have passed without a single release of a captured illegal immigrant into the U.S. interior. Thankfully, it has also deported hundreds of thousands of criminal illegals.

But then the country got a taste of what a “mass deportation” operation might look like when, in October of last year, 300 federal agents, some rappelling onto the roof from a Blackhawk helicopter, stormed an apartment building in Chicago in the middle of the night with guns drawn, purportedly targeting members of the criminal Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. After the dust cleared, only two of the 37 individuals arrested turned out to be members of the gang, and several U.S. citizens were zip-tied behind their backs for several hours, with some mothers forced to take their children from their beds onto the street, barely dressed and barefoot.

These are the kinds of scenes that will play out again and again if the Trump administration embarks on a plan to deport all people who are present in the U.S. illegally — large-scale trauma inflicted on children and parents and extensive civil rights violations of citizens caught up in mass raids.

In such a scenario, the trauma for families would become far worse than sudden midnight wake-ups, according to a new report published Monday by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and its humanitarian arm World Relief. The study estimated that if the Trump administration were to make good on its promise of deporting one million illegal immigrants per year, “up to 910,000 U.S. citizen children could be separated from one or both parents by the end of Trump’s term, with 665,000 expected to be separated from both parents.”

When Republicans like Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) make comments like, “The only dignity I care about is for Americans. Deport them ALL,” I wonder if they actually realize what this would entail? Thousands of scenes far worse than the Chicago apartment building raid would ensue, with children being ripped from their mothers’ and fathers’ arms, whose only crime is an immigration violation (which are usually civil violations). Does the GOP really want a humanitarian crisis on their hands going into the midterms?

What’s more, there’s no question that a significant proportion of Latin American immigrants who reside illegally in the U.S. came to escape horrendous conditions in their own countries. In countries like Guatemala and Honduras, where a significant percentage of immigrants are coming from, violent crime and homicide rates are sky-high, with close to 60% of both countries’ populations living in poverty. Accounts abound of immigrants fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras due to their lives being threatened over extortion money from gang members. “In my country, killing is ordinary — it is as easy as killing an insect with your shoe,” remarked a man from Honduras.

As noted by the NAE report, otherwise law-abiding parents who have been living in the U.S. illegally but have children who are U.S. citizens and who are facing deportation “face an excruciating dilemma: ask to bring their U.S. citizen children with them, even to situations where they would be likely to face mistreatment, violence, extreme poverty, restrictions on religious freedom and other conditions that caused them to flee their countries — or allow their children to be raised by friends, relatives or state-operated foster care systems.”

With the border secure and criminal illegals being steadily rounded up, can Americans find it in their hearts to have compassion for the millions of illegal immigrants who have lived, worked, and raised families peacefully in the U.S. for over five years (before the onslaught of border crossers that ensued under Biden)? If asked directly about the matter, I would wager that most Americans would be fine if these individuals came out of the shadows and began a streamlined naturalization process that could eventually lead to citizenship — a process based on a clean criminal record, English proficiency, a background check to screen for national security risks, routine taxpaying, and an oath of allegiance to the United States.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers in Congress are at least attempting to inject some common sense and compassion into the immigration debate. While far from perfect, legislation like the DIGNITY Act (introduced last July) at least attempts to reform the immigration system to give immigrants who have been continuously present in the U.S. for at least five years a pathway to citizenship.

Whether attempts for immigration reform like these succeed or not, all Americans, especially Christians, should search their hearts and contemplate whether the richest and most powerful country in the world can allow roughly 4% of the population — assuming they are otherwise law-abiding and want to become American citizens in good faith — to live in peace as they embark on a journey toward the American dream.

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

This article originally appeared here.