“The Trump administration’s plan to arrest and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible quickly became a numbers game as White House officials set quotas and government press officers highlighted each day’s deportation tally. As president, Donald Trump is continuing his campaign-trail rhetoric by insisting federal officers are rounding up murderers, even though a deportation policy that focuses on generating impressive numbers to achieve a “mission accomplished” moment cannot also prioritize removing dangerous criminals.”
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“After Trump became “disappointed” in the number of arrests so far, The Washington Post reported, the administration set arrest quotas, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials that “each of the agency’s field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets.” The Post added, “The orders significantly increase the chance that officers will engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations as they strain to meet quotas, according to current and former ICE officials.””
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“Given the desire for numbers and other factors, cases of U.S. citizens being held or arrested by ICE are likely—and already happening. A U.S. military veteran from Puerto Rico was apprehended during a raid in New Jersey. (Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.) “At least 15 Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico have reported being stopped at their homes and workplaces, questioned or detained by federal law enforcement and asked to produce proof of citizenship during immigration raids since Wednesday, according to Navajo Nation officials,” reported CNN.
During most presidential administrations, due to limited resources, ICE focuses on people with criminal convictions.”
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“Considering the vast majority of deportees will not be criminals but men, women, and children who lived and worked in the U.S. peacefully for years, Americans will decide if the number hailed by government officials is cause for celebration.”
“Less than 1% of immigrants deported last fiscal year were kicked out of the U.S. for crimes other than immigration violations.”
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“To deport millions of “criminals,” Trump would have to consider all undocumented immigrants as criminals. But being in the U.S. illegally is a civil violation, not a criminal one.”
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“Those millions would have to include agricultural, construction and service workers, students and others who are unauthorized to be in the U.S. but have no criminal backgrounds, according to legal specialists and an Axios review of federal immigration data.”
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“”There are not millions of people with criminal records to deport,” Nicole Hallett, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago, tells Axios.”
Coercion may work against smaller countries on issues that don’t hurt them too much, but that doesn’t mean it will work against stronger countries. Trump’s first term trade war with China was a failure.
“President Donald Trump on Sunday announced retaliatory tariffs on Colombia after its president blocked US military deportation flights from landing, the first instance of Trump using economic pressure to force other nations to fall in line with his mass deportation plans since he took office last week.
Hours after Trump’s announcement, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said he ordered the commerce ministry to raise tariffs on US imports by 25%.”
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“Earlier in the day, Petro announced he had blocked two US military flights carrying migrants heading toward the country and called on the United States to establish better protocols in its treatment of migrants. Petro also left the door open to receiving repatriated migrants traveling on civilian planes.
Following Petro’s initial announcement, Trump criticized him on social media while announcing a slate of new sanctions and policies targeting Colombia, including “emergency 25% tariffs” on all imports from the country that will be raised to 50% in a week, a “travel ban” for Colombian citizens, and a revocation of visas for Colombian officials in the US along with “all allies and supporters.”
“These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.”
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“The US Embassy in Colombia suspended visa processing in retaliation for Colombia’s refusal to accept repatriation flights, a State Department official told CNN on Sunday evening. The suspension applies to immigrant and non-immigrant visas, which typically number in the thousands each day.”
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“Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Sunday statement that Colombian officials had approved two military flights carrying migrants to Colombia and then revoked the authorization once they were en route”
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“Petro disputed that he had given authorization, writing on X after the secretary of state’s statement, “I will never allow Colombians to be brought in handcuffs on flights. Marco, if officials from the Foreign Ministry allowed this, it would never be under my direction.””
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“The US began using military aircraft to return recent border crossers back to their countries of origin last week.”
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“The Department of Defense “has helped administrations before, but not at this level. So it’s a force multiplier, and it’s sending a strong signal to the world. Our border’s closed,” Homan told ABC News.”
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“Mexico also appeared to turn around a military flight heading for the country last week.
Brazil joined Colombia on Sunday in condemning the Trump administration’s handling of repatriated migrants on deportation flights, denouncing the treatment of Brazilian nationals who arrived in the country Friday as “degrading.”
Brazilian authorities said they found 88 handcuffed deportees on a US flight headed to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, that landed in Manaus due to a “technical error.” Brazilian officials did not authorize the plane to continue on due to “the use of handcuffs and chains, the poor condition of the aircraft, with a faulty air conditioning system, among other problems,” and the migrants were transported to Manaus on a Brazilian Air Force flight.”
“In September, Lizzie Dearden and Thomas Gibbons-Neff wrote for The New York Times about the worldwide proliferation of designs for the FGC-9, a partially 3D-printed weapon that can “be built entirely from scratch, without commercial gun parts, which are often regulated and tracked by law enforcement agencies internationally.”
As one expert told the reporters: “Now you have something that people can make at home with unregulated components. So from a law enforcement perspective, how do you stop that?””
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“Another mass-deportation program—known by the offensive title of “Operation Wetback,” referencing a slur about Mexicans who got wet illegally crossing the Rio Grande—took place during the Eisenhower administration. That operation, which was backed by Mexican authorities who faced a labor shortage per the same report, didn’t directly use the military. But the Border Patrol used military techniques—and it ensnared many U.S. citizens.
I doubt politicians who have engaged in rhetorical attacks on immigrants will worry about their hardships, but shouldn’t they be concerned about what it will mean for U.S. citizens? During the 1950s operation, “Border agents raided Mexican American neighborhoods, demanded ID from ‘Mexican-looking’ citizens in public, invaded private homes in the middle of the night and harassed Mexican-owned businesses,” according to Axios.
Our Constitution upholds due process. The government cannot simply grab people off the street. It needs to follow a legal process. Every accused person gets their day in court to make their case. As George Washington famously said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force.”
Unleashing such force on a broad scale will not result in precise, humane, and just results. Government agents will conduct raids. Illegal residents often live among legal ones. Wide swaths of the population will get caught up in the dragnets.”
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“As someone who has hired construction workers in towns without large immigrant labor pools, I’m skeptical that large numbers of native-born Americans will jump at these newfound opportunities. The incoming administration embraces the Lump of Labor Fallacy—the idea that jobs are a zero-sum game where one person’s job comes at the expense of another’s job. In reality, more labor spurs economic growth and business development. That’s how market economies work.”
“Kevin Yang, a 46-year-old undocumented immigrant from China, said he once felt a sense of indebtedness toward the United States. But now, with President-elect Donald Trump’s second term on the horizon, he feels worried and on edge.
“The gratitude I once felt toward the U.S for accepting me into the country … has now shifted to anxiety and fear, Yang said. “And I know others in my situation feel the same.”
With the incoming Trump administration looking to prioritize deporting Chinese nationals, citing national security concerns, many undocumented Chinese men say they couldn’t feel further afield from the reasoning behind the potential policy — that Trump thinks they’re assembling an army within the United States.”
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“having fled their homeland because of political persecution, or uprooted their lives for better economic opportunities, many undocumented Chinese men reject the notion of being a threat to the United States as absurd.”
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“While Asian immigrants have long been the fastest-growing undocumented population, the number of Chinese nationals crossing into the United States in particular has skyrocketed in recent years. Between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, the number of undocumented Chinese nationals crossing both the northern and southern borders has tripled, from just over 27,000 to more than 78,000.
Experts and undocumented immigrants have said that China’s economic downturn and political friction, which came to a head during the country’s prolonged Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, were largely the basis of the migration wave. But Trump has repeatedly suggested that “military-age” men are conspiring to build an army.”
“During Trump’s first term, sanctuary cities refused to allow local law enforcement to share information with federal immigration agents or hand over immigrants in their custody. This time around, many are planning to do the same, even if doing so draws them into a fight with the second Trump administration.
Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a named contributor to its Project 2025 manifesto, has indicated the incoming administration plans to make sanctuary jurisdictions targets for “mass deportations.” Homan said recently he hopes that local law enforcement will cooperate with requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hand over undocumented immigrants already in their custody, especially when they pose a public safety threat.
“What mayor or governor doesn’t want public safety threats out of their communities?” he told the Center Square. “Their No. 1 responsibility is to protect their communities. That’s exactly what we are going to do.”
Most Democratic leaders, however, have made it clear that they will not accept federal government overreach on deportations and that they are preparing to challenge Trump’s immigration policies in court.
“We’re not looking for a fight from the Trump administration, but if he attacks our progress, we’ll fight back,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Vox. “Immigrants are such a critical part of who we are … who we will be.””
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“In his first term, Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary jurisdictions took two forms: attempting to withhold federal funding from them and challenging their policies in court.”
“According to the New York Times, Trump is planning to invoke the Insurrection Act to bring in the military to carry out mass deportations. The law is a key exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military to enforce federal law without the permission of Congress or the Constitution.
Only in rare instances have presidents invoked the Insurrection Act. President George H.W. Bush was the last one to do so amid the 1992 Los Angeles riots that broke out in response to the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King. President Dwight D. Eisenhower also notably used the Insurrection Act to facilitate the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The provision of the Insurrection Act most likely to apply in Trump’s case is one that allows the president to unilaterally activate the military domestically to enforce federal law whenever they determine that “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion… make it impracticable [to do so] by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”
Mirasola said Trump would have a “relatively easy time” making the case that cartels trafficking immigrants across the border constitute an “unlawful obstruction” to the enforcement of US immigration law. Trump has in some ways appeared to begin building his case for invoking the Insurrection Act through his rhetoric on the campaign trail this year by describing an “invasion of criminals” coming across the border.
But Mirasola said it would be harder for Trump to argue that it is impracticable to enforce immigration laws through the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” That’s because presidents have done so for decades, and border crossings are no longer unusually high: They have sharply declined this year and are down even from certain points in the first Trump administration.
However, the law gives the president “sole discretion, in most instances” to determine whether the criteria necessary to activate the military have been met, according to 2022 congressional testimony given by Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Joseph Nunn, the Center’s counsel in the national security program.
Goitein and Nunn also argued that the “vague and broad criteria for invoking the Act, combined with the lack of any provision for judicial or congressional review, render it ripe for abuse.” At that point, their concern was that Trump could have used the Insurrection Act to interfere with the certification of the 2020 election results. The use case is now different, but the potential for overreach is the same.
That is to say, while advocates may challenge Trump on whether the two key criteria for invoking the law have been met, the law gives presidents a wide berth — and the courts little power.
“For all practical purposes, courts have been cut out of the process,” Goitein and Nunn write.”
His plans increase the deficit, which is inflationary.
Large and broad tariffs are inflationary.
A massive crackdown on illegal immigration will also be inflationary as without cheap labor, making products will be more expensive or won’t happen here at all–particularly agricultural goods and housing.
Trump wants to end the independence of the Federal Reserve. Trump has been in favor of lower interest rates, which will increase inflation.
“Former President Donald Trump’s promise to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” would not only be a moral calamity requiring an enormous expansion of government—it would also be hugely expensive and ruinous to the American economy.
The governmental infrastructure required to arrest, process, and remove 13 million undocumented immigrants would cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years and would deal a “devastating” hit to economic growth, according to a report published last week by the American Immigration Council (AIC). The think tank estimates that a mass deportation plan would shrink America’s gross domestic product by at least 4.2 percent, due to the loss of workers in industries already struggling to find enough labor.”
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“The costs of mass deportation would rebound into the economy in several ways. The economy would shrink and federal tax revenues would decline. The construction industry, where an estimated 14 percent of workers are undocumented migrants, would be particularly hard hit, but the effects would be felt throughout the economy.”
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“Immigration restrictionists often assume that deporting millions of undocumented workers would allow more Americans to fill those jobs, but the economy is not a zero-sum game. A shrinking economy would be bad news for many workers who aren’t directly impacted by Trump’s deportation plan.”