Roger Marshall, the new Kansas congressman from the “Big First” district, says he thinks that "everybody is overreacting" to President Donald Trump's moves on immigration.

Marshall says he believes that the proposed "wall" on the southern border is metaphorical and that Trump merely means to secure the border, not necessarily build a physical barrier. Additionally, he says, he does not believe that a mass roundup and deportation of Hispanic immigrants is going to happen.

He adds that he believes a "pause" on allowing immigrants from the war-torn Middle East into the country while vetting procedures are reviewed is reasonable.

The executive order banning travel from seven primarily Muslim countries that had been previously identified as problematic because of difficulty with the vetting process was blocked by multiple federal courts as going too far in denying entry to green card holders and others with legal visas, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for years.

But the travel ban is a totally separate issue from the plan to deport millions of immigrants already living in the U.S., many of whom came from Mexico and other Central American countries for jobs in agriculture and the service industries of the U.S.

Marshall, who practices medicine in Great Bend, says that many of his patients are Hispanic and that he is well aware of panic in the community over the prospect of deportations. He says he knows families that are mix of documented and undocumented immigrants and that in many cases, it is the cumbersome nature of U.S. law that causes the problem. The lengthy process of getting family members approved to be in the U.S. is a problem for many longtime green card holders and causes some of them to simply give up and reunite their family outside the law.

Marshall says he does not believe there will be a mass roundup and deportation that tears families apart.

"The president has already said there won't be a change for the Dreamers, the kids who were brought here through no fault of their own," he says. "In my opinion, there is just a lot of overreaction."

He says he does not think Congress will try to tackle the thorny issue of comprehensive immigration reform before the administration is confident that border security has been achieved.

"I just see the first priority as being to secure the border," he says. "Then there is no doubt that we need to work on a system that will provide us with a simpler work visa program. We have 20,000 open jobs in the state of Kansas right now. There is no doubt these people are important to the Kansas economy."

One of the more problematic elements of a mass deportation of illegal immigrants to Mexico — as well as the building of a wall on the southern border — is that many, if not most, of the illegals in the U.S. are not Mexican. Some of them did travel through Mexico from Central American countries and come into the U.S. across the Mexican border.

But immigration officials say far, far more illegal immigrants entered the country legally and just didn't go home when their visas expired. Marshall acknowledges that as much as 70% of the illegal immigrant population arrived in that manner and that they come from all over the world — Asia, Africa and even Europe.