Former President Donald Trump, should he succeed in winning a 2024 Grover Cleveland-style nonconsecutive second term, is promising some serious action on border security and deportations of people in the United States illegally. While that will go down well with his base, we see again that we can count on the legacy media and the Democrats to be dishonest in their reporting of and reactions to this news.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, if re-elected in 2024, would expand his first-term immigration crackdown to include sweeping roundups of people who would be held in large camps to await deportation, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The report was based on interviews with several advisers, including Stephen Miller, who oversaw Trump's first-term immigration policies, the Times said.

It described Trump's plans as "an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history" and said it aimed to deport millions of people every year, including those who have been settled in the United States for decades.

Look at that phrase in quotes in the last paragraph: "...an assault on immigration..." That is false and almost certainly deliberately so. Whether you approve of the policy proposal or not, the only honest way to describe it is an "...assault on illegal immigration." Trump's proposals have always been focused on illegal immigration and on people who are already in the United States illegally, and whether they have been here for ten minutes or ten years, they are still breaking the law. 

The Biden Administration reacted with predictable and typical dishonesty as well.

The Biden-Harris campaign in a statement called Trump's immigration plans "extreme, racist, cruel policies" that are "meant to stoke fear and divide us, betting a scared nation is how he wins this election."

Let's break that down. So, enforcing the law - the primary purpose of the executive branch of the federal government - is "extreme?" How so? It's literally the President's job to run the law-enforcement arms of the federal government. "Racist?" How so? The law applies equally to anyone in the country illegally, and we have no evidence that these laws would be enforced with any racial bias; if someone is in the country illegally, then they are here illegally, whether they be from Venezuela, Iran, China, or Luxembourg. "Cruel?" How so? Will the illegal aliens be tossed into Soviet-style gulags? No, that seems to be a tactic of the left. 

The Biden Administration's comments on this are dishonest and hysterical, meant to elicit an emotional response, not a rational one.

Former President Trump's proposals have always been pretty simple and clear-cut: Close the running sore that is our southern border. Deport people who are here illegally. Put in place policies and procedures to ascertain precisely who is entering the United States and why - and we already know that people with bad intent have tried to enter the country. Even some of the nation's sanctimoniously-named "sanctuary" cities are now crying, "Hold, enough!"

No matter who the GOP's nominee will be, and no matter who (almost certainly) the Democrats choose to replace the doddering, befuddled Joe Biden as their candidate, illegal immigration and the southern border will be major issues in next year's campaign. President Trump staked out this ground in 2016. It worked in his favor then. There's little reason to think it won't work in his favor in 2024.