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Both sides in the debate about deporting illegal aliens seem to have accepted wholesale certain phrases, concepts and images.

We hear about roundups as if we’re talking about lassos and runaway cattle. Advocates for illegal immigration are, as always, quick to forward the notion that apprehending criminals (yes they’ve committed a crime. QED.) will be akin to (all together now) Nazi Germany’s arbitrary persecution, collection and detention of Jews. Cue the Photoshops and cartoons of guards, dogs, prison buses, trains, camps, groups of sad sacks with hands raised in surrender, long lines of prisoners chained together, etc.

But we’re talking about government here. The same government whose idea of fixing anything is usually to throw money at it and stand around waiting for the next coffee break. Government doesn’t do anything with style or even PR these days. It’s a shambling grey blob.

The reality is that we identify, locate and apprehend thousands of criminals, fugitives and those with outstanding warrants for their arrest every day, all day. There are sheriff’s offices in every county in America. There are US Marshals. 99% of these incidents are peaceful, even mundane. A knock on the door, a shrug of the shoulders, a reading of rights, an application of handcuffs and a ride in a car or a van. No muss, no fuss. Do some evade such enforcement? Resist violently? Of course. But as usual the public’s view has been distorted by ludicrous dialogue-heavy standoffs in Hollywood films. The vast majority of those mug shots printed in newspapers and shown on TV news were obtained during another humdrum shift by police on the streets or another humdrum shift at the regional jail.

Similar enforcement by immigration authorities will be equally humdrum and bureaucratic. Granted, locating individuals who have, intentionally or otherwise, no proper identification or records can be tricky but by the same token most of these people have been brazenly hiding in plain sight, smugly aware that La Migra pose no threat to them thanks to La Migra’s cynical, craven political bosses.

Besides, we are always told that the illegals are solid, peaceful, hard-working mostly law-abiding citizens (except for that pesky border-jumping/visa-violating part) who just want A Better Life (and, of course, we are obligated to give it to them) Their own mouthpieces emphatically state they are not violent, so let’s take them at their word.

Deportations will involve small groups, say 10 or 12, but they might involve just a few people or even a lone individual depending on home nation or other circumstances. White vans, chartered planes, Air Force bases closed to the public and the usual drab blankness of officialdom will rob the propagandists of the sort of 40s or 60s iconography they so desire to inflame passions.

The laws are already on the books. The methods and procedures for arrest are long-established. It won’t be East Germany. It won’t be Bosnia. It won’t be Stalin’s Russia. It will merely be another collar felt, paperwork done, mug shot snapped and a one-way trip home.