Beaufort County doesn’t need Alligator Alcatraz cages or masked gunmen | Opinion
The cages of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the federal government’s new 3,000-bed immigration detention center in Florida, are not a good look for we the people of the United States of America.
Images of masked gunmen chasing down immigrants in the government’s name are also jarring.
Neither is what we want, or need, in Beaufort County.
I hope that Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner heard that message last week in Bluffton at his second public hearing in weeks to explain why he has applied to partner with the federal government on its 287(g) Immigration and Customs Enforcement program. That rapidly-expanding program gives state and local agencies a role in the detention and deportation process.
Tanner should also know that law enforcement has broad community support.
Solid majorities of Americans are saying through polls and election results that open borders and sanctuary policies that defy U.S. immigration officials are not acceptable.
But the mass deportations that are only just beginning in America make no sense.
The economic reality is that businesses desperately need workers, and migrants are not taking Americans’ jobs. It’s farcical to say jobs done by workers being yanked off the streets can be easily filled by Medicaid recipients, as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said this month.
Frank Knapp, who has run the Columbia-based South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce advocacy organization for 25 years, agrees.
“It’s a pipe dream they’re selling to the public,” he told me.
I have known Knapp for years to be a well-researched and articulate voice of reason in advocating for small businesses, the environment and consumer protections. He is also now the managing director of The Secure Growth Initiative, a small-business coalition concerned with border security and enhancing America’s workforce to protect small businesses.
Knapp said if there were enough U.S. citizens to fill all the jobs held by undocumented migrants, “they’d have those jobs already because we have such a labor shortage, everywhere.”
Still, Knapp says it is hard to quantify the economic impact of migrants “because nobody is collecting this information.”
But early in the mass-deportation movement, businesses are beginning to raise red flags.
Agriculture, hospitality and construction leaders are trying to interject some business sense. It is said, for example, that construction jobs will cost more and take longer to complete due to a lack of workers.
Knapp does not favor “carve-outs” that would protect workers in certain industries from deportation. That would be unfair to those industries that are not protected, he said.
But he does see a way out.
“We’ve got to do something,” Knapp said. “We can’t just sit around and complain and say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t do that.’ You’ve got to have an alternative.”
Knapp said that alternative may be the Dignity Act of 2025, which was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 15 by Reps. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, and 20 co-sponsors, half Republicans and half Democrats.
In a statement, Salazar said the bill offered “the solution to our immigration crisis: secure the border, stop illegal immigration, and provide an earned opportunity for long-term immigrants to stay here and work. No amnesty. No handouts. No citizenship. Just accountability and a path to stability for our economy and our future.”
Long-term undocumented immigrants without serious criminal records could access a seven-year, renewable program providing work authorization and protection from deportation, if certain conditions and requirements were met, including a $7,000 restitution fee paid over the seven years.
Participants not have access to federal means-tested benefits and entitlements such as Medicaid, Social Security or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, yet they would pay taxes and stabilize the workforce.
After 20 years of inaction, Congress must act to fix broken, outdated immigration laws.
Knapp said comprehensive immigration reform might be an “off-ramp for the president.”
“Maybe when the time is right, the president will look at it,” he said.
That would make sense. It’s reasonable.
Crowded cages and masked gunmen are not.
David Lauderdale may be reached at lauderdalecolumn@gmail.com.