Donald Trump’s militaristic plan to deport as many as 20 million undocumented immigrants would tear apart families, likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars, harm the economy, and raise all sorts of constitutional, humanitarian and logistical problems.
But ask Republican lawmakers and candidates about the particulars of what could be a “bloody story,” as the GOP presidential nominee himself acknowledged last month, and they quickly shift the subject or downplay its implications, a sign of how eager they are to exploit their advantage on immigration issues against Democrats without actually owning up to the extremeness of what their party’s leader is proposing.
“That’s a very big logistical undertaking,” Nevada Republican Sam Brown said Thursday in a debate with Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) when asked if he supported the proposal.
“Where we need to start is securing the border,” Brown added, pointing to migrants with criminal records. “This is a huge undertaking, but it starts with securing that border.”
Rosen, meanwhile, followed up with some relevant questions.
“How would that happen? Who would get caught in that? How many innocent people would get rounded up?” she asked on Thursday, pushing for passage of the bipartisan border security bill that Republicans had blocked on orders from Trump earlier this year. Brown let her questions pass without a response.
Trump’s advisers have provided ample details about the plan, including the necessary construction of enormous prison camps for immigrant families, part of an effort to deport millions of people at a record pace. The camps would be built “on open land in Texas near the border” and would have the capacity to house as many as 70,000 people, which would double the country’s current immigrant detention capacity, Stephen Miller, the main point man on immigration in Trump’s White House, said last year. They’ve also suggested enlisting local police departments and the military to help carry out the deportations. The American Immigration Council estimates a mass deportation program would cost $1 trillion over a decade.
His campaign has also invoked President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose administration infamously oversaw a massive, deportation program, to describe “brand new crackdowns” on immigrants and “the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers and human traffickers in American history.”
At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania last week, Trump drew applause at a rally when he said he would “get these people out” and “deport them so rapidly.” He’s also used xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants, including saying that they are “poisoning the blood” of America as well as falsely claiming that they are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. (Studies have repeatedly shown immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.)
Trump’s calls for mass deportations and camps, his promise to use military force against an “enemy from within,” his threats against the independent news media and his glorification of violence have evoked comparisons to authoritarian regimes, including by the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, who called Trump “fascist to the core.”
Among Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, the idea of rounding up 11 million undocumented immigrants in the biggest deportation operation in the country’s history is treated far less seriously. GOP senators said they either weren’t familiar with the plan or spun it in ways that sounded more politically palatable.
“I don’t know much about it,” Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told HuffPost last month.
“Let’s start with the worst,” added Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri. “Let’s deport previously convicted child sex offenders who are here. Let’s take it in chunks.”
Asked how Trump’s plan would work, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said: “You just start revoking people who are here temporarily, like TPS, [and] say they’ve gotta go.”
The U.S. currently grants legal residency through the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program to people who came to the country to escape crisis conditions in Ukraine, Venezuela, Syria, Myanmar, Yemen, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sudan and South Sudan. Trump has vowed to revoke TPS for the thousands of Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he has smeared, accusing them falsely of eating neighbors’ pets.
I don’t know much about it.Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
Meanwhile, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said Trump should emulate the elevated levels of deportations under the administration of President Barack Obama, who was criticized by immigrant rights groups for being the “deporter in chief.”
“You look at what the Obama administration did and see how it worked,” Cassidy said. “When you deported people, they sent the message, ‘Don’t spend your money getting up there because they’re going to be deported right back.’ I suspect that’s what’s really the gist of what Trump’s talking about.”
Needless to say, Trump’s plan is significantly more involved than Obama’s deportations, which mostly targeted people with criminal records. Trump has not suggested focusing only on those in the TPS program or on criminals, but has said every single undocumented immigrant in the United States should be deported. At the Republican National Convention in July, his team passed out signs declaring ’Mass deportation now” to delegates.
But Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a critic of Trump who slammed him for his anti-immigrant rhetoric earlier this year, sounded skeptical of his plan for mass deportations.
“What does it mean to round up mass numbers of people that are here in this country illegally? What does that mean? I don’t know, and I’m not sure that he knows, as well,” Murkowski told HuffPost.
Republicans have hammered Democrats for months over the issue of immigration, which ranks in polls only behind the economy as Americans’ top issue. Significantly more U.S. adults compared with a year ago would also like to see immigration to the U.S. decreased, according to Gallup. Other polls have shown majority support for mass deportation, but public opinion is nuanced: A University of Maryland poll conducted this month showed swing-state voters favored a pathway to citizenship once they were informed about the details of mass deportation.
Most Democrats have also shifted their rhetoric on the topic of immigration compared with prior years, pressing for more and tougher security measures at the border. Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, has touted her tough-on-crime credentials, shredded past progressive positions like decriminalizing border crossings and even featured Trump’s border wall in her presidential campaign ads, messaging that seemed unthinkable during her 2020 presidential run in the crowded Democratic primary race.
“As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border. As vice president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades,” said one Harris campaign ad in August.
Yet she has also attacked Trump over his deportation plan, asking attendees at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute event last month to imagine its consequences.
“How’s that going to happen, massive raids? Massive detention camps?” she said. “What are they talking about?”
Other Democrats have used starker language to warn about Trump’s intentions and their severe consequences for the country.
“You should know he’s deadly serious,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told HuffPost last month. “It would cause turmoil, not just for individual families and communities, but economically it would tear the country asunder and it would crash our economy.”
“What’s different now is that it’s very clear he’s against legal immigrants, not just undocumented immigrants,” he added of Trump’s attacks on Haitian immigrants in Ohio. “He is targeting people based on their skin color. There’s just zero chance that he would be talking about Springfield if all of these people were from Holland.”
