A "Made for TV" Deportation Policy
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
Mass deportations were a big part of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and now in office, he’s making good on the wide-sweeping aspects of his policy, though the numbers aren’t yet massive. Most recently, he’s justified these actions through the 1798 Alien Enemies Act which only applies during wartime. When a judge attempted to halt the deportations to evaluate this use of the rarely-utilized law, Trump called for him to be impeached.
Guest: Michelle Hackman, U.S. immigration policy reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When Donald Trump was still campaigning for office, do you remember what he said he was |
| 0:11.0 | going to do about immigration? |
| 0:15.9 | He talked about revving up the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. |
| 0:22.6 | Two months in, I'm here to tell you, he has not done that. |
| 0:28.2 | You know, it's interesting. |
| 0:30.5 | I learned this from Michelle Hackman over at the Wall Street Journal. |
| 0:34.5 | The number of deportations is actually not that far above Biden levels, as far as we can |
| 0:41.3 | tell so far. Trump's immigration policy, Michelle says, it's made for TV. It just seems to be like |
| 0:50.1 | they are doing a much more public job of arresting and deporting people and targeting very different people than the Biden administration was, which is catching a lot of attention, scaring people. |
| 1:02.5 | And I think it's a purposeful tactic because they want a lot of people to self-deport. |
| 1:07.0 | Yeah, I'm so glad you said that. |
| 1:08.7 | Because to me, I look at what's happening right now, and it feels like instead of delivering on mass deportations, Donald Trump is delivering on a kind of sick pleasure of terrorizing migrants. |
| 1:23.5 | They've been amplifying every deportation. |
| 1:26.0 | They've been making a show of it. |
| 1:27.9 | I mean, there was one raid that they went on where they brought Dr. Phil with them. |
| 1:33.0 | And Christenome was there sort of dressed up in military fatigues, |
| 1:36.4 | but also, you know, with a – I think people were criticizing this sort of with a really full hairdo and face of makeup. |
| 1:44.3 | The images coming out of this White House are strange and disturbing. |
| 1:49.3 | There's a so-called ASMR video of a deportation flight. |
| 1:54.1 | It's created so you can be soothed by the clanking of chains and handcuffs. |
| 1:59.5 | There's a clip of migrants getting their heads shaved |
| 2:02.0 | before being carted off to detention. That one was reposted by Trump himself. And it's not just |
... |
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