David M. Shribman: Trump's planned 'Great Upheaval' has a dismal precedent

CHETICAMP, Nova Scotia — In the middle of the 18th century, Great Britain undertook a deportation program in the New World with many of the elements of President-elect Donald Trump's plan to expel hundreds of thousands of immigrants, perhaps even more than a million, from the United States. It did not go well.

This episode is lost in the memory of most North Americans, but is vivid today, some 270 years later, in the lives and cultures of descendants of the French colonists who lived, generally peaceably, among Indigenous peoples for a century and a quarter. It was a mass deportation known variously as the Acadian Expulsion or the Great Upheaval, and it remains a blot on British history — and, perhaps, an object lesson for the new administration as it is contemplating an even more massive expulsion.

"What Trump wants to do in terms of moving people has a real parallel," said Donald Savoie, Universite de Moncton scholar with Acadian roots. "It was extremely painful, and Acadians have not forgotten that experience."

Here in the land of what Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in "Evangeline," called "the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss," are the successors to the Acadians ruthlessly expelled from Nova Scotia between 1755 and 1763 and deported to the American Colonies, Great Britain and France. In all, about two-thirds of the Acadians were expelled in a brutal effort that provides the backdrop of Longfellow's epic poem about lost land and lost love.

Some of the Acadians and their descendants later returned here, to the fishing village of Cheticamp on Cape Breton Island, where Acadian culture is nurtured and Acadian recipes are renewed and revered. Everywhere flies the flag of Acadia, a yellow star (the stella maris, or "star of the sea," signifying the Virgin Mary) affixed to the familiar blue-white-red rectangles of the French flag.

Just as the Acadian lovers Evangeline Bellefontaine and Gabriel Lajeunesse were separated during the Great Upheaval in the Longfellow poem, so too were hundreds of Acadians in an expulsion that began when Col. John Winslow summoned males over the age of 10 to the Grand-Pre Church, where he read a decree ordering "That your Land & Tennements, Cattle of all Kinds and Livestocks of all Sorts are forfeited to the Crown with all other your effects Savings your money and Household Goods, and you yourselves to be removed from this Province."

The appointment of Tom Homan, who has promised "a historic deportation operation" as the Trump administration's border czar, and the strong role that Stephen Miller, the administration's leading anti-immigrant figure, will play as Trump's deputy chief of staff make it clear that the new president intends to set in motion what he has called "the largest deportation in the history of our country."

There are, however, obstacles to a mass deportation of those in the country illegally that could affect as many as 11 million people — about a quarter of the immigrants in the United States now.

One is the backload of cases in the nation's immigration courts; the Supreme Court has ruled that migrants facing deportation have the right of due process. The American Immigration Council, sometimes criticized for being an advocacy group for immigrants, puts the cost of such an operation above $315 billion for arrests, detention, processing and eventual removal. The group argues such an operation would reduce GDP by 4.2% to 6.8% and would lead to a reduction of more than $47 billion in federal tax revenue and $29 billion in state and local tax revenue.

More than half the country wants drastic changes at the border. A year ago, 41% of Americans wanted immigration decreased, according to the Gallup Poll. The figure now: 55%. The poll found that 42% consider immigration a crisis. Only four years ago, the public was split between those wanting to admit fewer immigrants and those favoring more.

The number of foreign-born people in the United States reached a record 47.8 million last year, about 14.3% of the population, according to the Pew Research Center, just below the record figure (14.8%) set in 1890.

Miller has spoken of creating staging grounds that would include runways for military aircraft near the Texas border. Trump confirmed the other day that he would use military personnel for deportations and has talked of using local police in the effort. No plans have been made in Mexico for the reception of those sent back across the border, no shelters have been created, and no means of feeding or employing the migrants are available — challenges that face Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's president for less than eight weeks.

"This will be a great burden on President Sheinbaum, who will need time to put a plan in place, and it will be highly disruptive to U.S.-Mexico relations," said Patrice Franko, a Colby College expert on Latin America. "This is going to be a complex process that merits great discussion, a lot of interagency work, and negotiations in how to do this in a way that does not spill over into other areas, including the drug war."

The Acadian precedent offers no comfort, only disruptions in the short term and anxieties in the long term.

Professor Savoie, the leading Canadian expert on government operations, remembers the 1955 bicentenary commemorations of the Acadian expulsion.

"The celebration was that we were still alive and kicking," he said. "To this day, Acadians have never let go. They have demanded an apology. It's still a part of who we are. I think people and entire generations will be marked forever by the Trump expulsions. The United States will make enemies for generations."

The big difference between the 1755 expulsions and the ones that Trump is planning is the media technology of the time. The Trump expulsions will be visible globally in a way that was inconceivable when the Acadians were deported after refusing to swear oaths to the British crown without assurances that they would be free to practice their religion and could remain neutral in case of war with France.

"This Acadian precedent to the Trump plan didn't work out very well," Savoie said. "It did not work out for us, as it is still a bone in our throat. We Acadians have never turned the page. And it didn't work out for the British crown, because centuries later it is still a stain on their history."

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David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.