IL for www.theindianalawyer.com

Donald Trump won the presidency campaigning on a promise of a far-reaching immigration crackdown, and early indications are that he intends to execute it.

The immigration section of Trump’s presidential transition website reaffirms his plans to “cancel unconstitutional executive orders”—which his advisers have said includes President Barack Obama’s 2012 program that has protected from deportation 750,000 young people brought to the U.S. illegally.

Once he takes office in January, Trump can end that program without any approval from Congress. He can also end Obama’s 2014 executive action, currently blocked by the courts, to extend that deportation reprieve to some 4 million undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed crimes.

The website reemphasized other Trump proposals for which he may need congressional approval, including plans to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, suspend new visas from certain high-risk countries, end funding for sanctuary cities, and change legal immigration policies to better serve U.S. workers.

The president-elect listed immigration as one of his top three priorities on Thursday.

“We’re looking very strongly at immigration,” he told reporters in the Capitol after meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “We’re going to look at the borders, very importantly, we’re looking very strongly at health care and we’re looking at jobs—big league jobs.”

Trump tapped Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an anti-immigration firebrand who helped draft controversial restrictionist laws in Arizona and Alabama, to his transition team.

“I’m a member of the immigration policy transition team and there’s going to be a lot to do there in part because Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama are diametric opposites when it comes to immigration policy,” Kobach told Kansas television station KWCH.

Kobach promised that there will be “a lot of changes.”

In addition, Trump has been relying on Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, another immigration restrictionist, for advice on immigration policy.

Immigration was a flashpoint in the 2016 race, with Trump ousting Republican rivals like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio by campaigning on a far more restrictive platform than they initially supported. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wanted to expand Obama’s immigration relief plans and grant a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally.

“He’ll spend a lot of time controlling the border. He may not spend very much time trying to get Mexico to pay for it. But it was a great campaign device,” Newt Gingrich, a Trump surrogate and former House speaker, told National Public Radio.

A wall on the Southern border is estimated to cost possibly $25 billion.

“I’m in favor of securing the border, and I do believe that you have to have physical barriers on the border,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday on Fox News when asked if he supports a wall. “I will defer to the experts on the border as to what is the right way to secure the border.”

A spokesman for McConnell didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is advising Trump, said Thursday on CNN that “the wall is going to to take a while,” but suggested Trump could “do it by executive order by just re-programming money within the immigration service.”

Trump’s immigration policies are sure to face immense blowback from the Hispanic community. They won’t get support from congressional Democrats, said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

“I haven’t seen anybody lay out how you build a wall,” he said. “I don’t think there’ll be common ground on that topic.”

By Peter Funt

So, the most frequent refrain since Election Day is that “no one saw this coming.” Not the pollsters, not the media, not the Democrats’ machine.

We might also note that the Cleveland Indians didn’t see what was coming after the rain delay in Game Seven.

But unlike the Indians, we saw plenty, and we saw it early on. More than a year before the election we saw how a reality-TV star could dominate a debate stage and, with total disregard for truth, slice and dice 16 other candidates.

We saw the power of controlling the message through social media. The world’s first Twitter Candidate spewed middle-of-the-night vitriol that by noon the next day was often the lead story among mainstream media.

We watched as the powerful forces of skewed news——–led by Fox News Channel, Breitbart and Drudge——–invented some stories and distorted others for a vast audience that was fearful, hateful, vengeful and eager for political and emotional reinforcement.

We looked on, often entertained, by the spectacle of rallies that attracted tens of thousands of people, without much regard for the fact that these rally-goers and their friends might actually cast votes.

We saw qualified Democrats like Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren step aside so that the Candidate of Destiny could brush away Martin O’Malley and——–with alarming difficulty——–socialist Bernie Sanders.

We noted that the Democratic National Committee can be every bit as reckless with the rules as its Republican counterpart.

We watched as a litany of poor judgments came back to haunt the Democrats’ nominee. It wasn’t about legality, it was about optics. It was how a suspicious electorate would view outrageously high speaking fees, stonewalling over emails, and a murky relationship with a multi-billion dollar family charity.

Following the conventions, we observed one candidate working harder on the trail and making many more campaign stops than his opponent.

We read between the lines that several outrageous threats and promises from early in the campaign were fading away in calculation for the home stretch. For instance, there wouldn’t really be “mass deportations” of undocumented immigrants, only a roundup of violent criminals. There wouldn’t actually be a ban on Muslims entering the country, only a more serious “vetting” of people coming from the world’s hot spots. Et cetera.

In the final days we looked at poll results that seemed comforting, even though state figures were far less reliable than national numbers.

We saw the apparent arrogance of a candidate who took states like Wisconsin and Michigan for granted, and who trotted out Hollywood big shots like Lady Gaga and Cher, who many Americans find so easy to resent.

On Election Day, we saw some long lines at polling places and didn’t bother to vote. We saw the elaborate post-election celebratory set-up at the Javits Center in New York and figured the contest was in the bag.

It was there to see all along. Alas, in our new and confusing political world, seeing isn’t always believing.