Dear Editor:
I kindly respond to Mr. Guebert’s “statements of fact” about former President Donald Trump’s position on illegal immigration and his proposed deportation policy.
First, I acknowledge a fact that Guebert does not: approximately six million migrants have illegally entered the United States under the Biden-Harris-Mayorkas administration. Conversely, during Trump’s tenure, barely one-third of that amount were allowed in. Again, a fact that Guebert neglects to note.
Then, Mr. Guebert makes a bold assertion based on nothing more than left-wing and liberal media talking points: “All (950,000 illegal agricultural workers) would be deported under the plan former President Donald Trump has been trumpeting….” Guebert, as any journalist worth his or her “salt,” should have provided incontrovertible proof that (1) Trump plans to deport illegal ag workers and (2) that Trump would deport all 950,000. And I am betting my two-cents worth that Guebert cannot substantiate his claim because Trump NEVER said this.
Guebert then gaslights all farmers — particularly dairy farmers — by suggesting that if Trump is elected Nov. 5, 2024, and then assumes office the early afternoon of Jan. 20, 2025, that within a matter of hours an executive order would be signed and all 950,000 illegal ag workers would be rounded up and boarded on buses bound for Mexico. Then, on Jan. 21, Americans across the country would wake up to grocery stores with empty milk shelves. What a strange and impossible scenario Guebert portrays.
And I’d bet money that the two “sources” Guebert cites to under gird his rickety, “the-sky-is-falling” warning (Natasha Sarin, a Yale University professor and University of Colorado professor, Chloe East) are fellow “Never Trumpers.”
This is what Donald Trump has promised if re-elected as president: to deport foreigners who are in this country illegally, beginning with those that have criminal records or those that have committed crimes since illegally immigrating to the U.S. Period. Nothing more. Nothing less. In fact, one need only review Trump’s posture toward American agriculture during his four years in office to see clearly that the former President constantly supported American agriculture, primarily by “dropping the hammer” on China who has since the late 1970s (Nixon’s “opening” of China) held American agriculture hostage.
If Trump is elected, I expect him to deport illegal migrants who are criminals. Quickly and decisively. I also predict Trump will again hold China’s “feet to the fire” when it comes to American farmers’ and ranchers’ livelihoods. Further, I am betting that Trump will finally settle the existential problem of foreign (especially Chinese) ownership of American farmland. Something Biden and Harris have failed woefully to even address the past four years.
Alan Guebert is constitutionally entitled to his opinion, as am I. My guess is, however, that most farmers lean far more right than left. And I would bet that most farmers appreciated Trump’s agricultural policies during his four years in office, while suffering from the current administration’s lack of decisive action. Either way, both sides of any issue affecting farmers ought to be heard equally so that those who work the land can decide for themselves.
Mark Davis
Retired coal miner, current small row-crop farmer
Liberty, Putnam County, W.Va.
