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As a candidate and then as president, Donald Trump has shown as troubling propensity to vacillate, flummoxing his critics and supporters alike. But on one issue Trump has stood relatively firm: immigration.

Trump has exhibited that resolve by sustaining his rhetoric to build a wall along Americas southern border and with orders to send back those who entered the country illegally, and by fighting for his proposed moratorium, recently upheld in part by the U.S. Supreme Court, on visitors from six majority-Muslim nations prone to support, condone, or harbor terrorists.

Critics have relentlessly lambasted Trump on these ideas, disparaging him as a racist, a nativist, a xenophobe, and a religious bigot, if not an outright hater of foreigners and Muslims.

But in recent days two immigration-related story lines have emerged to demonstrate that Trumps critics have misjudged his policies even if they will never admit it.

On July 5, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency deported a Boston resident named John Cunningham. Cunningham initially came to America in 1999 on a 90-day visa to work for the summer. He never left. By overstaying his temporary visa, Cunningham became an illegal immigrant, although by all reports he was in all other respects a law-abiding and model Boston resident.

Why is this significant? Cunningham is white, and earlier this month was deported back to his native Ireland.

"People are very, very concerned and lying low," Ronnie Millar, Cunninghams friend and the head of the Boston-based Irish International Immigrant Center, told the Associated Press. "The message is that if it can happen to John, it can happen to anyone." And by anyone he presumably meant any of the 50,000 Irish citizens who the Irish embassy estimates are living illegally in the U.S., mostly concentrated in Boston, New York and Chicago.

The AP referenced the Cunningham case in highlighting the Trump administrations hard line on illegal immigrants from Europe.

Between the beginning of this fiscal year on Oct. 1 through June 24, the AP reported on Tuesday, the government has deported more than 1,300 European illegals the bulk of which came from Romania, Britain, Spain, Poland and Russia. While President Barack Obama remained in office for nearly the first four months of that time, this figure suggests Trump has implemented a get-tough policy because ICE deported just 1,450 illegal immigrants from Europe during all of fiscal year 2016.

Its certainly true that the number of Europeans deported is relatively small compared to the number of Latin Americans, including Mexicans, shipped home during that time. Mexicans, for instance, make up 93,000 of the 167,000 people deported over that same time span, the AP reported. But the Europeans share of the overall illegal immigrant population is much smaller. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that Europeans comprise just 440,000 of the 11 million illegals living in the United States.

The second story surfaced on Wednesday.

A federal judge in Michigan temporarily halted the governments planned deportation of roughly 1,400 Iraqis from around the country who reportedly had criminal records, some dating back three decades.

Why is this significant? Well, at least 114 of them, and possibly dozens more, according to news accounts, are Chaldeans, which is a sect of the Catholic Church in the Middle East. In short, they are Christians. And much like those Irish illegal immigrants in Boston, these pockets of Iraqis are fearful of being exposed, caught and deported.

We call attention to these developments to point out that federal agents on the ground have taken Trump at his word about curtailing illegal immigration, and that the presidents policy is being carried out regardless of race or religious persuasion. As Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant-rights group, told the AP, "It's pretty clear ICE is removing anyone undocumented they come across."

Laws are meaningless unless they are enforced and enforced fairly and across the board without heed to who is being affected by it.

Trumps critics are free to argue that this crackdown is unnecessary, wrongful, or hurtful to individuals and communities. But recent events suggest they should stop promoting the fiction that Trump is out to get one particular race or religion.

Read more:
Our Viewpoint: Get-tough immigration stance applied to all - Gainesville Sun