How Mass Deportations Could Destroy America

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Trump has consistently made one campaign promise the most prominent: Mass deportation.

"So let me be clear," says Digital Producer @sam.vp, "mass deportations are going to fuck this country up."

In 2016, Trump said he would deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. Once in office, he ordered sweeping worksite raids, enacted a ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, and deliberately separated migrant families, many of whom have yet to be reunited.

But thanks to outside resistance, internal opposition, sanctuary policies, legal guardrails, and sheer ineptitude, the Trump administration removed fewer than 1 million people from the country.

In a second term, Trump has pledged to fulfill his promise and conduct “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” His acolytes, led by hardliner Stephen Miller, have spent years devising legal workarounds to prevent their extreme proposals from being curtailed or killed in the courts.

This time around, they plan to invoke an infamous 18th-century wartime law, deploy the National Guard, and build massive detention camps—and intend on reshaping the federal bureaucracy to ensure it happens, drafting executive orders and filling the administration with loyalists who will quickly implement the policies.

“No one’s off the table,” said Tom Homan, the former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump.

If Trump and his allies have it their way, armed troops and out-of-state law enforcement would likely blitz into communities—knocking on doors, searching workplaces and homes, and arbitrarily interrogating and arresting suspected undocumented immigrants.

Not only would Trump’s plan rip families and communities apart, but it also would have devastating effects for years to come, including on US citizens who perhaps have overlooked how integral undocumented immigrants are to their everyday life.

The reality is that if his plan were implemented, American life as we know it would be ruined—even for those cheering for mass deportation.

Here’s how this “mass deportation” agenda would fundamentally reshape the country.

#Trump #Immigration #MassDeportation

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