During the early period of the first Trump presidency, a news story chockful of irony broke across the country about a female Republican voter whose husband became the proverbial poster boy for karmic injustice.

The husband, an undocumented Mexican who lived in the US for almost 20 years with nary a parking ticket on his record, was deported back to Mexico just three months after the new President assumed office, leaving behind a distraught American spouse and three US citizen children.

According to the wife, an Indiana resident who co-owned a family restaurant with her husband, she voted Republican because she believed it would be good for the economy. She also believed that only the “bad hombres” would be deported.

It turned out she was partly correct on the first count but completely off the mark on the other.

After her husband was deported, the woman said she felt betrayed. Unfortunately for her, regret or remorse wouldn’t bring her husband back.

Shooting oneself in the foot has never been a good idea.

With the ramped-up immigration enforcement activities going on around the country nowadays, no one should be surprised if a few “conservative” voters, their relatives or employees would, by accident or design, be ensnared by the hard-liners’ restrictionist trap one way or the other.

Like the lady from Indiana, there are some “conservative” voters whose relatives or employees have questionable immigration status.

Among them are the purely undocumented and those who have valid status but are technically in violation thereof (for example, by working or studying without proper authorization).

Also included are people who have overstayed their original visa status, and those who have entered the country through fraudulent means.

These immigration violators, opinions to the contrary notwithstanding, are prime targets of deportation under the new administration.

Additionally, there is the “supercharged” denaturalization project being planned against certain naturalized Americans.

Albeit the alleged targets are people who pose a threat to US national security, equally vulnerable are people who’ve committed prior misrepresentations or minor violations, if such information had not been disclosed at any stage of a person’s immigration journey.

Interestingly, based on this corner’s interactions with naturalized Filipino-Americans who voted “conservatively” in the last elections, it’s obvious that most had no inkling of the potential impact of the new administration’s strict immigration stance on their business or personal lives.

Like the Indiana lady, most believed that only the “bad hombres” would be deported. Almost all assumed, quite smugly, that their US citizen status would render them completely untouchable. The majority thought that plugging the border would be the sole focus of enforcement.

Almost no one has heard of the “turbocharged” denaturalization project.

Only a tiny few knew about the plan to restrict legal immigration.

And even fewer still were aware of the proposal to eliminate family-based migration.

A certain Latino journalist, in writing for The Independent as to why some minority voters are themselves anti-immigrants, hit the nail right on the head when he postulated: “Immigrants wanting to kick out the next group of immigrants is as old as America itself.”

It is true. Older generations of immigrants have always harbored feelings of resentment against the newer ones.

Bad hombres or not.

And bullet to the foot or not.