Trump’s immigration proposals: mass deportations and giant detention centers

The former president of USA donald trump (2017-2021), favorite to be the Republican candidate in the November elections, has made it clear that, if he returns to the White House, his immigration policy will go beyond the famous border wall that catapulted him to the presidency in 2016.

At his campaign rallies, he has adopted strong anti-immigration rhetoric, going so far as to claim that foreigners “poison” the blood of the United States and proposing plans ranging from mass deportations to the construction of giant centers to detain undocumented migrants.

Mass deportations

Trump has repeatedly promised at his campaign events that, if he returns to the Presidency, he will carry out the “largest deportation operation” in the history of the United States. USA.

To do so, the federal government would ask National Guard reservists for help, detailed Stephen Miller, the main ideologue of Trump’s xenophobic proposals, just three days ago during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the largest quote from the American right.

According to Miller, trump It would deploy the Armed Forces to the border to deny entry to those who need to request asylum and automatically deport those who try to cross to the interior of Mexico.

Trump has cited as an example of this type of deportations what is known as ‘Operation Wetback’, carried out in 1954 by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) and which resulted in the deportation of more than a million people, in majority Mexican.

According to historian Mae Ngai in her book ‘Impossible Subjects’, the deportations were brutal, with some Mexicans repatriated on what could easily have been an “18th century slave ship,” while others died of heatstroke after being abandoned by American authorities in the desert.

Giant centers to detain migrants

To carry out this armagedonic operation, the Trump campaign has hinted at its plans to build large centers to detain migrants and then expel them from the United States.

The idea would be to establish “large-scale” facilities where migrants would wait to be deported with expulsion flights scheduled on a continuous basis, Stephen Miller, who previously advised Trump during his term and could return to the CPAC conference, explained at the CPAC conference. White House.

However, the legality of these centers could be questioned in court, as already happened with some of Trump’s most radical plans when he was in the White House.

In anticipation of those legal challenges, Trump has promised to invoke a section of the alien and sedition laws passed by Congress in 1789, which give the president greater power to deport and detain individuals who are not U.S. citizens in times of war.

That law was used during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) to establish detention centers where thousands of Japanese migrants and their descendants born in the United States were detained.

The campaign of trump has not specified how many migrants would be targeted by these policies. However, it is estimated that 11 million undocumented immigrants currently live in the United States.

Family separation

Trump has also not ruled out the possibility of separating migrant families arriving at the border again, a policy he already implemented during his time in the White House.

Speaking on CNN last year, Trump admitted that the idea of ​​separating families “sounds harsh,” but then added: “When you tell families that if they come we are going to separate them, they don’t come. And we can’t afford to have more.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in charge of immigration, has acknowledged that 4,227 children were separated from their families during the Trump Administration.

After the coming to power of the American president, Joe BidenIn January 2021, a task force was created to address this issue and, according to a DHS report from November 2023, 3,147 children have already been reunited with their parents.

Biden’s re-election campaign has raised the alarm about Trump’s policies and has described his immigration plans as “racist, anti-American and ineffective.”

“It’s just cheap politics.”Maca Casado, the campaign’s Hispanic media director, told EFE.