In a supreme irony, Americans are celebrating Thanksgiving to, among other things, express gratitude for the founding of the republic – by 102 Englishmen who arrived as refugees 404 years ago– – at a time when the country is being prepared for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants who, like the “founding fathers,” came seeking freedom and a better life.

Among the false claims made against today’s refugees to justify the planned expulsion is that they are “criminals” – whereas those early colonizers and their descendants committed a crime against humanity by nearly exterminating most of the Indigenous peoples whose land it was for 30,000 years and which they coveted.

Just as the Mayflower passengers braved the dangers of the seas to find refuge here, many of today’s immigrants risk the perils of the Darién Gap as they flee oppression and violence. They number around 11 million and some have lived here for decades, the average being around 13 years. They found work, pay taxes and raise families while existing in the shadows. Most are from Mexico and other parts of the Americas and millions live in “mixed-status” households that include their children born here and who are citizens, along with some who have legal status.

FWD.us (Forward US), an immigration and criminal justice reform organization based in Washington, D.C., says that nearly 20 million Latino Americans live in such households. Deporting those who are undocumented will mean breaking up families, as happened during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office. A majority of the families that face the trauma of separation live in six states, including Florida.

More than five million children under 18 who were born here live in households which have at least one undocumented member, as do more than six million adult citizens. Sixty-eight percent of the adult citizens are Gen Z or millennials born in 1981 or later.

More than 1.1 million adult citizens have an undocumented spouse, who will be subject to deportation, regardless of how many years a couple has been married, because legal status does not come merely through marrying a citizen. The path towards legalization could include “parole in place,” which allows the spouse to stay in the country while application for legal status is being processed. It could also mean having to leave the country while that process is going on, which would take several years.

In June, President Joe Biden unveiled a “Keeping Families Together” program to allow around 500,000 undocumented spouses of citizens to obtain legal status and a path towards citizenship, CBS News reported. However, earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge J. Campbell Barker, a Trump appointee, ruled that the program violated immigration law, siding with 16 Republican led states that had sued the administration. CBS News noted that the ruling could be appealed but that Trump would most likely quash it.

Immigration reform matters have often ended up in the courts, which have tended to side with Republican lawmakers who object to the Democratic proposals. That happened with President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to protect against deporting children whose parents brought them to the country illegally. They now number around 250,000, averaging 20 years of age. The courts have rejected DACA.

Also, lawsuits could be filed challenging the interpretation of the Constitutional provision of automatic citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants – the so-called “anchor babies.” If the U.S. Supreme Court rules that it does not, they too will be subject to deportation – to countries which they know nothing about.

Mass deportation is expected also to impact the economy because undocumented immigrants work in a variety of jobs. Organizations such as the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) estimate that they comprise more than eight million or 5.2 percent of the national labor force. They work in industries such as construction (1.5 million), restaurants (one million), agriculture and farms (320,000), landscaping (300,000) and food processing and manufacturing (200,000). Also, CMS projects that they will be needed also for other jobs over the next decade, such as cooks, home health/personal care aides, delivery and taxi drivers, and medical/therapy assistants.

And they pay taxes. The American Community Survey has estimated the amounts as $59.4 billion in federal tax and $13.6 billion in state and local taxes in 2022. Also, they paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance – programs which they cannot access because of their status.

As to crime, Trump led the hysterical portrayal of them as coming from their countries’ prisons and psychiatric institutions and launching a crime spree. He and his allies cited as an example the killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley in February by Jose Ibarra, an undocumented Venezuelan national. (On Nov. 20, a Georgia judge sentenced Ibarra to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)

But that case was no indication that undocumented immigrants are prone to committing crimes. Several sources have stated that their crime rate is well below the average for American citizens.

The American Immigration Council reported as recently as Oct.17 that, in 1980, when immigrants comprised 6.2 percent of the overall population, their crime rate was 5,900 per 100,000 people. By 2022, when they were 13.9 percent of the population, the rate had dropped by 60.4 percent to 2,330 per 100,000.

The National Public Radio (NPR) show “All Things Considered” on March 8 cited a Stanford University study indicating that, since 1980, immigrants were 60 percent less likely to be imprisoned than others. The Cato Institute, a Libertarian think-tank, found that, in Texas – probably the most anti-immigrant state – the percentage was 31 percent. A study by The New York Times and The Marshall Project covering between 2007 and 2016 found there was no link between undocumented immigrants and a rise in violent or property crimes.

NPR reported that, among undocumented immigrants, “there is a real fear of getting into trouble and being deported” and that they “mostly don’t want to rock the boat.”

So, undocumented immigrants are not all criminals, they have jobs, they have raised or are raising families and they pay billions of dollars in taxes. Many fled from countries which the CIA destabilized to prevent them from becoming Marxist, thus paving the way for the coming of brutal dictatorships and violent gangs: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.

Instead of mass deportations, the U.S. could follow the lead of Spain which announced it will grant legal status to 300,000 undocumented migrants for each of the next three years, for a total of 900,000, who have lived in the country for at least two years, The New York Times reported. It is not just about “respect for human rights” but also “about prosperity,” Elma Saiz, migration minister, told Radio Nacional de España.

In addition, the Pew Research Center reported that 64 percent of Americans support giving undocumented migrants a path to legal status, under certain conditions, such as passing a security background check and having a job.

But all that is unlikely to matter because the mass deportation plan, is more than a matter of foreigners violating immigration law. Stephen Miller, a senior adviser in the previous Trump administration, who is widely believed to have been behind the family separation policy then, has been tapped for the job of Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and is expected to play a crucial role in the mass deportation plan. Like Trump, he has deemed undocumented immigration an “invasion” and “occupation.”

Miller, who has been accused of having “white nativist” views, spoke at a Trump rally in Aurora, Colorado, where mug shots of two accused Venezuelan gang members were prominently displayed. “Are these the kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you were raised with? Are these the neighbors you want in your city? No!” Miller declared. “America is for Americans.”

But, given our history as a nation, who, really, is an “American”?