President-elect Donald Trump has indicated that there is no economic cost too high to carry out his draconian plans to implement what would likely be the largest and most devastating deportation program in U.S. history.
Speaking to NBC News’s Kristen Welker on Thursday, Trump said that he intends to “make the border strong and powerful.” Although he claimed he still wants “people to come into our country,” Trump has repeatedly made clear his racist preferance for white, European immigrants, deriding African and Haitian migrants as coming from “shithole countries,” and falsely accusing Mexican migrants of being “rapists” and “bringing crime.”
Trump vowed during his campaign to implement the largest deportation program the U.S. has ever seen. When asked by Welker, however, how much that might cost, Trump scoffed at the question, saying it wasn’t a concern.
“It’s not a question of a price tag,” he said, attempting to justify any cost by fear mongering about people “killed and murdered” by immigrants — despite the fact that crime rates among immigrants in the U.S. are statistically lower than rates among U.S.-born citizens.
“There is no price tag,” he added for emphasis.
Trump’s plan to round up immigrants would rely on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that has been used at various points in U.S. history to deny people their liberties, including to imprison thousands of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II.
“The law was enacted to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime,” wrote Katherine Yon Ebright, a constitutional war powers expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, in an analysis of Trump’s plans last month. However, the law “can be — and has been — wielded against immigrants who have done nothing wrong.” This includes people who are in the U.S. with legal documentation, she said.
Indeed, in addition to undocumented immigrants, Trump has indicated that he would target immigrants living in the U.S. with documentation, including Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, who he attacked on the campaign trail by spreading racist and incendiary lies.
Immigrant rights advocates have expressed concerns about a second Trump presidency, noting that he and his allies have likely learned from their missteps in trying to carry out similar plans during his first term in office.
“It is different this time. There’s a plan. There is a sense of urgency that they’ve created around this issue. And they know how to use the levers of government in a way they didn’t in 2016,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, told The Guardian last month.
“It’s his second term. Ostensibly they’re not worried about re-elect, so now’s the time to get all the crazy stuff done,” Virginia-based immigration rights lawyer Hassan Ahmad said after Trump’s election win this week.
Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, stated in an essay before the election for YES! magazine that, in the event of a Trump victory, the Biden administration should take proactive steps in its final weeks to protect the rights of migrants.
“In the case of a Trump election win, demanding that the Biden administration dismantle the detention and deportation systems and rescind harsh border policies will be imperative,” Shah said. “So far Biden has received a pass from liberals and even some immigration advocates on his ramping up of enforcement, but the short period of time between the election and inauguration will require a united front to make [Trump adviser] Stephen Miller’s dark agenda that much harder to implement.”
Other immigrant rights advocates and organizations vowed to oppose Trump even more vigorously than they had before.
“It does not matter who is in power at this point,” read a statement from Al Otro Lado, a group that provides legal and humanitarian support to refugees, noting that their “mission remains unchanged.”
“We will continue to speak out, to expose injustice and to fight as we did under Trump Round One,” the group continued, adding:
We urge our allies, the communities that we serve and those just now waking to the realization that remaining apolitical and staying out of issues that ‘do not concern them’ is no longer an option, to reflect on how we can work collectively, how we can share knowledge and resources, and most importantly, how we can support each other.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
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Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
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