Donald Trump channels Russell Pearce's ghost, promising 'Operation Wetback' 2.0

For a while now we’ve pretended it was behind us, that Arizona isn’t the same state anymore and the hateful, harmful past was just that … the past.

But, no.

What may be the worst, ugliest, most discriminatory and counterproductive pieces of legislation ever passed in Arizona — Senate Bill 1070 — along with the man behind it — the late state Sen. Russell Pearce — will again be a driving force in Donald Trump’s bigoted, fear-mongering campaign for the White House.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump is promising that, if elected, he would institute a massive, nationwide roundup of unauthorized immigrants and deport millions of individuals each year.

Trump talked about such a thing back in 2015, when he first ran for president. But the idea wasn’t original.

Russell Pearce touted a roundup

Back in 2006, Russell Pearce (who passed away earlier this year), had the same idea.

I spoke with Pearce about this in his office at the State Capitol in 2006. He waxed on about how the U.S. needed to revisit a 1950s Eisenhower-era mass-deportation program called “Operation Wetback.”

“My critics don’t like history,” Pearce told me. “They want to rewrite history. I didn’t use the term (wetback). I quoted a successful program. The far left always tells you, ‘Russell, you can’t deport 12 million people.’ I say, ‘Yes, you can, if you have the will.’ ”

He referred to his critics as “sissies,” adding, “People are tired of that. They’re tired of the games. (Politicians) don’t even know their own constituents … .”

Trump knows his constituents.

It cost Maricopa County $215 million

During his first presidential run he told a crowd, “Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president, people liked him. I like Ike, right? The expression. I like Ike. Moved a million and a half illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border.

”They came back. Moved them again, beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south. They never came back. Dwight Eisenhower. You don’t get nicer, you don't get friendlier. They moved a million and a half people out. We have no choice.”

3 letters for why the border is a mess: GOP

Pearce was the author of SB 1070, a specious piece of legislation that inspired a series of immigration sweeps in Latino communities by deputies under former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio during which undocumented immigrants were targeted. Operations like this are never clean or tidy or fair, however, and so legal residents and U.S. citizens also were rounded up.

This generated lawsuits and an ongoing legal battle that has cost Maricopa County taxpayers $250 million. So far.

Not to mention the human misery.

SB 1070, much of which was thrown out in court, also turned Arizona into a national pariah for a time, costing untold losses in tourism and convention business, among other things.

What would Trump's plan cost the nation?

Now Trump is looking to revive and amplify that kind of shameless xenophobia into a nationwide policy.

Or, as he told a crowd in September, “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

That kind of hateful delusion negatively impacted the lives of too many innocent people in Arizona and has cost taxpayers — in just one county — more than $250 million. So far.

Expand that nightmare to our entire nation, as Trump promises to do, and I’m not sure there is a super computer in all the world capable of calculating the cost in terms of dollars … or human misery.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump channels Russell Pearce's ghost for a new SB 1070