Inside Donald Trump’s Mass-Deportation Plans

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s political career, and in his second successful Presidential campaign he promised to execute the largest deportation in history. Stephen Miller, Trump’s key advisor on hard-line immigration policy, said that the incoming Administration would “unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” possibly involving the use of the military. “I do think they’re going to strain the outer limits of the law on that,” the staff writer Jonathan Blitzer tells David Remnick. “We’re entering unprecedented territory.” Blitzer unpacks some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric, and explains measures that the new Administration is likely to take. “I.C.E. has a policy that discourages arrests at schools, hospitals, places of worship, courts,” he says. That policy can change and, he believes, will. “You’re going to see arrest operations in very scary and upsetting places.” The aim, he thinks, will be “to create a sense of terror. That is going to be the modus operandi of the Administration.” Blitzer is the author of “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here,” a definitive account of the immigration crisis.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene. I'm David Remnick. Early each week, we bring you a conversation
0:11.5	from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour. Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald
0:18.5	Trump's political career for nearly a decade now.
0:21.6	His first presidential campaign was largely about building the wall to keep people out.
0:26.8	In 2024, the focus has been on sending back immigrants who are already here.
0:31.9	He's promised the largest deportation in history, millions of people potentially,
0:36.2	and it starts on day one, according to Trump.
0:39.4	Stephen Miller said the administration would unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to
0:44.3	implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.
0:49.3	A deportation policy on this scale would have enormous impact, not only on the lives of immigrants,
0:55.6	but on their communities, on the U.S. economy, and much more.
0:59.6	To understand what's really possible come January, I'm joined by staff writer Jonathan Blitzer,
1:05.2	who's the author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, a definitive account published this year of the immigration crisis in America.
1:18.0	Jonathan, before we get into the prospect of the Trump administration and a potential deportation,
1:25.5	I want to ask you if you think looking back on the now completed
1:30.3	campaign, if the Democratic Party got immigration wrong, if the Biden administration ignored
1:38.0	it for too long, as has been the critique all along from the Republicans.
1:41.3	I definitely think the Democrats and Biden specifically miscalculated in thinking that if they put their heads down and didn't talk about this, the issue would somehow pass or it would kind of dissolve in the general ether.
1:54.5	And so they didn't really—
1:56.0	Why would they do that?
1:57.1	Well, it's tough news for Democrats all the time, because the Republicans have a very simple, coherent message.
2:03.2	You know, it's plain and it's forceful and it's pithy and that is, you know, shut down the border.
	...

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