Former President Donald Trump addressed a crowd of NRA members at the organization’s Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Trump told the MAGA faithful, “no one will lay a finger on your firearms,” and touted his plan for mass deportation of immigrants. He said that, if re-elected, he would “within moments” of taking office, employ what he has repeatedly called “the largest domestic deportation operation in history.”
[Note: Trump has cited, since he first ran in 2015, Eisenhower’s 1954 mass deportation program — controversially nicknamed Operation Wetback — as a model of success. The military-style operation involved massive sweeps of immigrants and legal residents most notably in Mexican American communities in California and is said to have resulted in the deportation — or “repatriation” — of between 300,000 and 1.3 million migrants.]
Trump’s current promise to remove 500,000 to 1 million migrants a year would require at scale approximately 150-200k law enforcement officers, including a “private army of red state national guard he’d deploy into blue states,” according to The Atlantic writer Ronald Brownstein. (Many undocumented immigrants gravitate toward blue state big cities including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.)
Trump told NRA Friday his mass deportation program would begin "within moments" of taking office. To do at scale would likely require 150-200k law enforcement officers, including a private army of red state ntl guard he'd deploy into blue states More here. https://t.co/khc6t72xmH
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) February 10, 2024
Former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, David Leopold, told The Atlantic: “What this means is that the communities that are heavily Hispanic or Black, those marginalized communities are going to be living in absolute fear of a knock on the door, whether or not they are themselves undocumented.” Leopold added: “What he’s describing is a terrifying police state, the pretext of which is immigration.”
Trump’s top advisor on immigration, Stephen Miller, told The New York Times that if re-elected Trump’s second administration would create a private red-state army of National Guard troops from red states (Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Iowa, Alabama, Arkansas, et al.) to deploy in deportment sweeps.
In January, 25 Republican governors (who have sent National Guard troops to the U.S.-Texas border) released a joint statement in support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, applauding Abbott for “utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border.”
The 25 Republican Governors accuse the Biden administration of “refusing to enforce immigration laws” while the administration accuses the Republicans of refusing to sign a bipartisan border security bill as a political tactic (directed by GOP frontrunner Trump) to avoid giving Biden a political win before the 2024 election.
