By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan
President-elect Donald Trump’s long history of vilifying immigrants is reaching a dark and likely violent escalation as he nominates to key White House cabinet and staff positions a slew of “America First” extremists and white supremacists. One of Trump’s central campaign pledges was to deport at least 12 million people, who he refers to as “illegals.” Trump’s election win drove up the stock prices of private prison corporations but it has also triggered grassroots mobilization to confront Trump’s cruel plans.
“The United States is now an occupied country…nine days from now will be Liberation Day in America,” Trump said at his racist rally at Madison Square Garden (MSG) on October 27th. “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out…kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”
Except for Trump himself, no one in his circle spews anti-immigrant hate with more zeal than Stephen Miller, Trump’s nominee for Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. At that MSG rally, Miller warmed up the crowd, bellowing, “America is for Americans and Americans only!”
Miller was the architect of the anti-immigrant policies during the first Trump administration, like the Muslim ban and family separations. He’s had four years to plot, and has developed a broad plan to deliver mass deportations. Miller detailed his plans last February, speaking at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference:
“Seal the border, no illegals in, everyone here goes out. That’s very straightforward [with] a series of interlocking domestic and foreign policies…You have ‘Remain in Mexico,’ finish the wall. You have robust prosecutions of illegal aliens. You do interior repatriation flights to Mexico, not back to the north of Mexico. It’s very important. You reimplement Title 42.”
“Title 42” refers to a 1944 public health law that allows the president to restrict immigration and deport anyone deemed a health risk. It was deployed by Trump during the COVID pandemic and continued by President Biden into 2023.
Miller continued, “The travel ban authority…You would bring those back and add new ones. You would establish large-scale staging grounds for removal flights. So you grab illegal immigrants, and then you move them to the staging grounds, and that’s where the planes are waiting for federal law enforcement to then move those illegals home. You deputize the National Guard to carry out immigration enforcement.”
“Staging grounds,” not to be confused with concentration camps.
Trump’s also named a so-called “Border Czar,” Thomas Homan. Homan was Trump’s acting director of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He’ll be in charge of Trump’s planned mass deportations.
In an interview with 60 Minutes’ Cecilia Vega, Homan dodged the price tag of mass deportations:
Vega: We have seen one estimate that says it would cost $88 billion to deport a million people a year.
Homan: I don’t know if that’s accurate or not.
Vega: Is that what American taxpayers should expect?
Homan: What price do you put on national security? Is it worth it?
Vega: Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?
Homan: Of course there is. Families can be deported together.
Homan was referring to deporting children who were born in the US, thus legal US citizens, with their undocumented parents.
Trump also nominated South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to be Secretary of Homeland Security. She has scant national security experience yet several times deployed the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S./Mexico border in Texas.
Trump, who plans to use the US military to mass deport, has nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News’ weekend host and military veteran, to be Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is known to have numerous white supremacist tattoos including a Christian nationalist “Jerusalem cross” inspired by the Crusaders.
People are organizing across the country in advance of this coming wave of raids, roundups, concentration camps and mass deportations. Alejandra Pablos is a reproductive justice community organizer and storyteller based in Arizona, who successfully fought against her own deportation for a decade.
Speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour, she described her efforts with a rapid response network, “working with people on the ground, trying to inform folks on their rights and what they could do to protect each other.”
The ACLU has prepared for a year, and has teams of lawyers ready to fight Trump and his deportation team in court.
Trump, Miller, and Homan have tried mass deportations before. They were met with massive resistance, in the streets and in the courts. The opposition forced Trump to reverse an executive order, halting the separation of families.
The challenge now is for people with the privilege and protections of US citizenship to act in solidarity with the millions of our threatened, undocumented neighbors, and confront Trump’s planned mass deportations with disciplined, sustained mass resistance.