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immigration and customs enforcement
Time and Again, Mass Deportations Have Failed—Trump’s Plans Will Be No Different
The real result from Trump’s deportation plans will be not mass removals of people, but massive time delays and wastes of both Americans’ time and money.
Nov 21, 2024
When a student in the 2000s, I was actively involved in immigrant raid response efforts that churches, labor unions, and community groups organized to mitigate the effects of then-President George W. Bush’s nationwide enforcement actions.
We took resources like clothes, food, and money to affected families in the states of Minnesota and Iowa, and conducted “Know Your Rights Trainings” for undocumented workers on what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents went to their homes.
Since then, we have learned two things.
First is that enforcement actions, that is, arresting, detaining, and deporting people en masse, fail to stem the flow of undocumented migrants coming into the U.S. The Bush-era deportation machine didn’t stop the flow of people coming north, the lack of opportunities due to the 2007-08 financial crisis did. Deportations during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term paralleled what Bush did, but failed to reach Obama-era levels in terms of numbers. Still, Covid-19—not mass arrests—caused the drop in border crossings, illegal and legal. Crossings picked up post-pandemic with political and economic disasters in Central America and Venezuela driving people north.
How will it look with soldiers in camouflage arresting middle-aged workers picking lettuce?
The second thing we learned is how to play defense.
More to the point—in addition to remembering how to prepare immigrant communities for raids, groups like those I was part of grew to include politicians and lawyers who over the years generated sanctuary ordinances around the country that proved effective the first time Trump was in power. Accordingly, the tools for Trump’s mass deportation plan are well-known and his fantasy of addressing our ongoing immigration crisis by amping up arrests will fail.
Before parsing details, let’s make one thing clear—Trump’s immigration policies are mostly about generating fear, with little by way of serious substance. Just listen to incoming “Border Czar,” former ICE director Tom Homan, who promised “shock and awe”—the phrase used to inaugurate the U.S. war of aggression on Iraq in 2003—to describe the incoming administration’s approach to immigration policy.
Bombast and terror aside, we can expect that Biden-era policies like humanitarian parole for asylees from Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela will be revoked. Restrictions on ICE concerning arrest priorities will also be lifted, like Trump did when he was first president. The president-elect has already said that his “Remain in Mexico” policy will return, which, for anyone trying to enter the United States to seek asylum, means that they cannot reside within the country while awaiting a court date. Trump will also seek resources from Congress to build a nonsensical wall that people desperately trying to get into the United States will either scale, dig under, or run around. Resources will also be sought for hiring additional border patrol agents and ICE officers.
Of the many problems Trump’s deportation machine will face, let’s start with this last one—personnel. Put simply, people don’t want to do Trump’s bidding. Nothing has changed in this regard since 2017, when he ordered the hiring of 5,000 additional agents to patrol the border. In 2018, just 118 people answered the call.
There is also the price tag for arresting and deporting the nearly 12 million undocumented people in the U.S., with estimates placing the cost of mass deportation at over $315 billion, shrinking the economy in the process by between 4% and 7%. Unphased, Trump has said that mass deportations “have no price tag.”
Trump may learn to regret those words, as besides money, the government will have to expend considerable time.
The reason is that the U.S. is a federal system where states and cities can, and have, created sanctuary policies. These ordinances, which are popular with law enforcement, stipulate that local police do their day-to-day jobs of providing security without collaborating with federal immigration authorities to arrest and deport undocumented people. Practically for immigrant justice, sanctuary policies gum up the deportation machine, making the federal government do its job alone. Despite what ill-informed critics claim, instead of creating a climate of murder and mayhem, sanctuary jurisdictions allow local police to work with federal agents when a person commits a violent crime.
There is also the idea that the military will be called to detain undocumented migrants, as Trump has mentioned.
Here the fear campaign is on full display. I mean, it’s scary to think that soldiers would be turned on undocumented people who live all around the country. Yet, pausing to think this through, the military does not have any special information as to the whereabouts of migrants. So, are we to expect military vehicles driving up and down city streets, with soldiers pointing rifles at people they suspect of being in the country illegally? Will the army storm farms around the country and detain half of the essential workers without status who make the food system operate? How will it look with soldiers in camouflage arresting middle-aged workers picking lettuce?
Regardless of the extent that Trump pushes mass arrests, he will for sure whine and complain about sanctuary policies, threatening the politicians who uphold them like he did in his first term. And like his first term, many politicians will resist. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are already gearing up.
For those areas outside of sanctuary jurisdiction, arrests may increase. This happened during Trump’s first time in power, especially in places like Florida’s Miami Dade county that repealed its sanctuary policies.
Here, the problem is that immigration courts are woefully under-resourced, reporting a backlog of 3 million cases. Some believe that doubling the number of judges will help address these cases—but by 2032. Mass arrests will only further jam up the system. Meanwhile, immigration lawyers are skilled at defending their clients, taking the time to search for how people can change their status, for instance if people have suffered domestic abuse or witnessed a crime.
This will be the real result from Trump’s deportation plans—not mass removals of people, but massive time delays and wastes of both Americans’ time and money.
Still, what is most important in this discussion are our immigrant movement networks. Before and during Trump’s first term, this movement has built an underground railroad of sorts, connecting immigrants with churches, legal resources, and meals if needed. And more critical than things, this movement has for years provided that one thing that Trump and his lackeys are working so hard to wrest from migrant communities—hope. That is, hope that there will be a better day for migrants and their allies to press serious politicians about making real reforms instead of being terrorized and living in fear.
Until that day comes, we fight on.
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Trump Slammed Over Plans for National Emergency and Mass Deportations
"Mass deportations aren't just inhumane," one congresswoman said. "Trump has a recipe for economic disaster. Farmers, workers, and consumers... all pay the price."
Nov 18, 2024
Migrant rights advocates on Monday sharply criticized U.S. President-elect Donald Trump after he confirmed plans to declare a national emergency and use the military to pursue his long-promised mass deportations, despite legal and logistical barriers.
Shortly after Trump's electoral victory earlier this month, Tom Fitton, president of the right-wing group Judicial Watch, welcomed reports that the incoming administration is "prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program."
Fitton's post was on Trump's platform, Truth Social. The president-elect responded early Monday, simply saying, "TRUE!!!"
While Trump didn't provide additional details on Monday, fearmongering about immigrants has been a priority for the president-elect since he entered politics during the 2016 cycle and recent reporting has previewed what could come when he returns to the White House after campaigning on a pledge to "launch the largest deportation program in American history."
In the latest elections, Republicans retained control of the U.S. House of Representatives and reclaimed a Senate majority, but Democrat Yassamin Ansari had a decisive win in Arizona's 3rd Congressional District. She said Monday that "Trump's plan to use the military to aid mass deportation is abhorrent and hateful, and will directly impact many of my constituents in AZ-03. Using the world's strongest military to target the most vulnerable community is not leadership, it's abuse of power."
Vanessa Cárdenas, senior director of communication for America's Voice, similarly said in a statement that "Trump continues promoting anti-immigration hate and is using it as an excuse to appropriate the military for domestic law enforcement and circumvent normal checks and balances on presidential power."
Cárdenas continued:
Trump and allies are attempting to justify their potential use of the military to conduct indiscriminate mass raids and roundups by wrapping it in the language of 'invasion' and the false notion that America is under assault, and it must be repelled by force. Yet just because Trump and allies have spent recent years normalizing this idea and making this assertion doesn't make it any less radical. Let's be clear, this is the adoption of a white nationalist conspiracy theory, already linked to multiple deadly acts of gun violence against civilians, which is driving federal policy and Republican agendas.
Despite the martial language and emphasis on the border and recent arrivals, make no mistake that the Trump team is planning to target long-settled immigrants and mixed-status families as part of their mass deportations. Having legal status and even citizenship is not necessarily a shield of protection. Their pledges to end immigration enforcement priorities, while making as many people as possible deportable, is a disturbing tell that their definition of 'criminal' will look fundamentally different from most Americans' conceptions. Perhaps most disturbingly, the resulting fear and cruelty that will be on display is likely a feature and not a bug to those in charge.
Pointing to Trump's previous term, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said Monday that "my lesson from the first time around is that we absolutely cannot take things that the Trumpworld people say as gospel, given their total lack of specifics and total willingness to make grandiose pronouncements that are aimed at triggering the libs and making headlines."
"The National Emergencies Act is a specific law which unlocks specific authorities to do specific things—a president doesn't declare a national emergency and then become king. And 'use the military for deportations' isn't one of those specific things," he highlighted, citing the Brennan Center for Justice guide on emergency powers.
Reichlin-Melnick acknowledged that "last time, Trump invoked a specific emergency authority to unlock military construction funding—and direct more troops to do logistical support at the border" with Mexico.
The New York Timesreported Monday that during the Republican primary campaign, "Mr. Trump's top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, said that military funds would be used to build 'vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers' for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries."
Miller—architect of the forced family separation program from Trump's first term—is set to serve as deputy chief of staff for policy in the next administration. The president-elect has also named other immigration hard-liners for key posts: Tom Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as "border czar" and GOP South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for homeland security secretary.
"Mr. Miller has also talked about invoking a public health emergency power to curtail hearing asylum claims," according to the Times. Trump's team also plans to "expand a form of due-process-free expulsions known as expedited removal" and "stop issuing citizenship-affirming documents, like passports and Social Security cards, to infants born on domestic soil to undocumented migrant parents."
Additionally, the newspaper noted, Trump intends to bolster the ICE ranks "with law enforcement officials who would be temporarily reassigned from other agencies, and with state National Guardsmen and federal troops activated to enforce the law on domestic soil under the Insurrection Act."
Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, explained in 2022 that "although it is often referred to as the 'Insurrection Act of 1807,' the law is actually an amalgamation of different statutes enacted by Congress between 1792 and 1871" to enable "the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations."
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Monday expressed concern about Trump's potential use of another law enacted in 1978.
"Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency and utilize the Alien Enemies Act to conduct mass deportations," Omar, a war refugee, said on social media. "This xenophobia and cruelty shouldn't be allowed in America. We are going to fight it every step of the way."
As Nunn's Brennan Center colleague Katherine Yon Ebright detailed last month, the law "allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation," and although "enacted to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime, it can be—and has been—wielded against immigrants who have done nothing wrong, have evinced no signs of disloyalty, and are lawfully present in the United States."
While Trump and his allies have prepared to use any powers they can to deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, rights advocates and reporters have warned of the consequences of their plans for not only those people, but also 20 million mixed-status families and citizens who would suffer from the economic consequences.
As Mother Jones' Isabela Dias recently laid out, mass deportations would have major negative impacts on care, food, and infrastructure while enriching charter flight operators, consulting firms, private prison companies, and surveillance contractors.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) issued a warning after Trump's Monday post, declaring that "this will hurt all of us."
Spotlighting a Monday report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) similarly stressed that "mass deportations aren't just inhumane—they'd devastate America's agricultural industry. Combined with his tariffs, Trump has a recipe for economic disaster. Farmers, workers, and consumers... all pay the price."
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Trump's Planned Immigrant Purge Sends Stagnant Private Prison Stocks Soaring
"The GEO Group was built for this unique moment... and the opportunity that it will bring," said the firm's chair.
Nov 08, 2024
The chairperson of a leading U.S. private prison corporation on Thursday gushed over the "unprecedented opportunity" presented by the prospect of Republican President-elect Donald Trump delivering on his campaign promise to begin the mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants on his first day in office.
As
Common Dreamsreported Thursday, Trump's campaign confirmed that "the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants" ever is set to start immediately after the former president returns to the White House on January 20.
GEO Group stock surged more than 56% from the close of trading on Tuesday, Election Day, to Friday's closing bell. Competitor CoreCivic shares skyrocketed 57% over the same period. By contrast, GEO Group stock saw just a 21% rise in the three months preceding Election Day. CoreCivic inched up just 11% over the same period.
"The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our company's [and] country's history, and the opportunity that it will bring," GEO Group founder and chairperson George Zoley said during a Thursday earnings call call in which he hailed the "unprecedented opportunity" ahead, according to a company statement and coverage by HuffPost.
"While our third-quarter results were below our expectations due to lower-than-expected revenues in our electronic monitoring and supervision services segment, we believe we have several potential sources of upside to our current quarterly run rate, with possible future growth opportunities across our diversified services platform," Zoley continued.
"We have 18,000 available beds across contracted and idle secure services facilities, which if fully activated, would provide significant potential upside to our financial performance," he noted. "We also believe we have the necessary resources to materially scale up the service levels in our [Intensive Supervision Appearance Program] and air and ground transportation contracts."
Zoley added that "as we evaluate and pursue future growth opportunities, we remain focused on the disciplined allocation of capital to further reduce our debt, deleverage our balance sheet, and position our company to evaluate options to return capital to shareholders in the future."
According to a study published last month by the American Immigration Council, deporting the estimated 13.3 million people in the U.S. without authorization in one massive sweep would cost around $315 billion, while expelling 1 million undocumented immigrants per year would cost nearly $1 trillion cumulatively over a decade.
On Thursday, Trump insisted "there is no price tag" on his deportation plan. He dismissed concerns that such an operation would require the use of concentration camps like the mass detention centers—which one Trump official euphemistically compared with "summer camp"—of his first administration.
The private prison industry has also thrived during the Biden administration, which is on pace to match the 1.5 million people deported during Trump's previous presidency. Although President Joe Biden signed an executive order "on reforming our incarceration system to eliminate the use of privately operated criminal detention facilities" early during his tenure, the directive did not apply to detainees in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
The number of immigrants detained by the Biden administration doubled between 2021 and 2023. In July 2023, more than 90% of immigrants detained by ICE each day were locked up in private facilities. In January 2020, the last month of Trump's first term, 81% of daily detainees were held in private lockups.
In 2022 a bipartisan U.S. Senate probe corroborated allegations of staff abuse against migrants jailed at facilities owned by LaSalle, a private prison company that
claims to be "run with family values." Whistleblowers and others have also revealed abuses from torture and medical neglect to sexual assault of children and forced sterilizations at privately run immigration detention centers.
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