At the Republican National Convention last week, before a crowd of thousands bearing signs reading “Mass deportation now!” among other slogans, former President Donald Trump pledged to end what he called the “greatest invasion in history” taking place at our southern border.

Convention attendees then gave a rousing cheer for a Trump plan that would lose jobs, exacerbate fiscal problems, harm economic sectors like agriculture and construction, make it harder to get eldercare and child care, and probably increase crime.

I'm not making this up.

Trump's plan is to deport most of the more than 10 million immigrants lacking proper legal documentation in the United States, by using the military and police to send them to camps and quickly evict them. This would reduce crime and open up more jobs, and higher paying ones, for U.S.-born Americans – or so he claims. This, he says, is modeled after President Dwight Eisenhower's deportation scheme of 70 years ago – except, being Trump, much more bigly.

The Republican presidential nominee's tough "lock 'em up and send 'em back" rhetoric plays well with many voters, and immigration is likely to remain a top talking point in the run-up to November.

But like other Trump proposals that effectively play on grievances – such as imposing across-the-board tariffs to supposedly help American industry or gutting the civil service to ward out members of the "deep state" – the........

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