Trump’s plans promise to be violent, separate American families, hurt workers, and tank the economy. And the more voters find out about the details, the more they’re repelled
For the second time at a 2024 presidential debate, Donald Trump refused to answer a direct question about his campaign’s signature issue – mass deportation. During Tuesday’s debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, ABC News moderator David Muir attempted to question Trump on his proposal to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in the history,” including deputizing a red state army of National Guard and local police to go to blue states to round up and detain in mass camps millions of our neighbors, coworkers, and loved ones. During an unhinged rant at a Wisconsin rally last weekend, Trump promised these mass deportations will be a “bloody story.”
“How would you deport 11 million undocumented immigrants?” Muir questioned. “I know you believe that number is much higher. Take us through this. What does this look like? Will authorities be going door to door in this country?”
But as noted by The New York Times, Trump unsurprisingly “refused to offer any specifics” into his plans. He muttered “local police,” but not much else. This follows a pattern of Trump refusing to explain the specifics behind the most consequential immigration and economic policy proposal of the 2024 campaign. Trump “has generally dodged or ignored questions about the specifics of his plans to remove millions of people from the country — how much they would cost, how they would work and exactly whom they would target,” The Times added.
During his lone debate against President Biden in June, Trump similarly dodged probing from CNN moderator Jake Tapper. “President Trump, staying on the topic of immigration, you’ve said that you’re going to carry out, quote, ‘the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,’ unquote,” Tapper asked. “Does that mean that you will deport every undocumented immigrant in America, including those who have jobs, including those whose spouses are citizens, and including those who have lived here for decades? And if so, how will you do it?”
But just like on Tuesday night, Trump dodged the question, intentionally running out the clock and forcing moderators to move on by instead ranting about the debunked “migrant crime” lie (undocumented immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than U.S.-born Americans, and definitely at a much lower rate than certain residents of Mar-A-Lago.)
This code of silence refusing to discuss the details is uniform across the GOP ticket. JD Vance, Trump’s weird running mate, also refused to detail their signature policy issue during an August interview with Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker, where he dodged questions about family separation not once, not twice, but three times. Vance “evaded multiple questions Saturday about whether Trump’s proposed ‘zero tolerance’ policy on immigration would lead to family separation,” NBC News reported.
Seeking to minimize the devastating human and economic costs of their Project 2025-endorsed mass deportation agenda, Vance instead claimed during his non-responses that “I think that families are currently being separated.”
Cravenly wrong, because ripping weeping children from the arms of asylum-seeking parents as a matter of official government policy was implemented by the Trump administration, and hundreds of these kids continue to remain separated to this very day due to Vance’s running mate’s negligence and cruelty. Vance’s refusal to answer direct questions about mass deportation and family separation echoed that of Trump the week prior in Arizona, where he admitted that immigrants in American mixed-status families may be affected by his plans. “Provisions will be made, but we have to get the criminals out,” he said. Once again, he refused to offer other key details. “The former president did not elaborate on the provisions he would make for mixed-status families,” NBC News said.
The fact is that separating thousands of children from their parents with no plans to reunite them remains one of the darkest chapters of any modern American presidency – and that’s precisely why they don’t want to talk about it.
Trump does often brag that his mass deportation agenda will be the “largest in American history,” often referencing the racist operation under President Eisenhower. But the lasting legacy of his offensively-named program is still felt by some and is a window into Trump’s agenda. The Wall Street Journal profiles Victor Ochoa, a US-born citizen who was sent to Mexico during the Eisenhower operation.
But even if the Trump-Vance ticket refuses to discuss the details, the plans exist. A giddy Stephen Miller has laid out some of the horrific plans to allies in the right-wing media. Radley Balko reported this past May:
In November, Miller offered the details of his plan in an interview with Charlie Kirk. Miller plans to bring in the National Guard, state and local police, other federal police agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary, the military. Miller’s deportation force would then infiltrate cities and neighborhoods, going door to door and business to business in search of undocumented immigrants. He plans to house the millions of immigrants he wants to expel in tent camps along the border, then use military planes to transport them back to their countries of origin.
This week, during a back-and-forth where businessman Mark Cuban consistently dunked on him, Miller wrote a screed on Twitter:
The campaign has enthusiastically provided extensive detail on his immigration plans, including — to name but a few — deploying Title42/Safe 3rds/Remain in Mexico/Asylum Bars to achieve a one hundred percent perfect deportation rate at the border, finishing the wall, significantly enhancing criminal penalties for human smuggling and trafficking, launching a DOD embargo of drug vessels from South America, terminating all of Kamala’s expedited entry and parole programs for illegals at the ports and by plane, terminate all Harris-imposed limits on ICE enforcement operations, restoring and expanding the terror travel ban, suspending refugee resettlement, and using 287(g) state and local partnerships in conjunction with federal law enforcement and DOD logistical support to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in U.S. history.
That’s a lot of details, but we don’t hear it from the top of the ticket. (And, if you have a few minutes and want to watch an epic meltdown by Trump’s immigration guru, watch this video, which already has 6,000,000 views.)
Even if Trump won’t discuss the details because he’s perhaps oblivious (who can forget his widely-ridiculed “I have the concepts of a plan” debate night line about his long-awaited health care proposal?), it doesn’t really matter, because he’s the vehicle for Miller, who according to former classmates has been hostile to minorities since his youth, to finally exercise his mass deportation agenda. Miller has reportedly described his mass family separation crackdown as “pure bliss.” Others are equally giddy, as Rolling Stone said:
Other Trump allies, like [Trump associate and former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee Mike] Davis, have described this program with delight, promising the forced removal of American-citizen children: “We’re going to deport a lot of … anchor babies, their parents, the grandparents. We’re going to put kids in cages,” he’s said. “It’s going to be glorious.”
Looking at polls gives us an indication of why the twisted masterminds of the mass deportation agenda don’t share details on network television. While many in the mainstream media focused on one CBS/YouGov poll that found that a majority of respondents favored mass deportation, the numbers flipped when respondents were asked if they supported the deportation of immigrants who have no criminal record and have lived in the U.S. for a number of years. Meanwhile, support for legalization remains high. Gallup recently found 70% of U.S. adults favor legalization of the undocumented community with 81% of Americans supporting citizenship for Dreamers.
Simply put, when Americans find out the harsh details around mass deportation, they become repelled. When Americans are asked if these families should get a chance to stay legally, they have overwhelmingly approved in poll after poll, year after year. Miller may get excited about the deportations, but it’s no wonder Trump and Vance refuse to say anything.
There are also the immense fiscal costs that go along with the human costs of kicking out millions of workers and families. As policy expert Michael Ettlinger wrote in his recent op-ed at the Boston Globe, Trump’s plan would “vaporize” the economy by depleting critical industries including construction and agriculture of their workers, reigniting inflation, and hurting the wages of U.S.-born workers. The nearly $100 billion in tax dollars that undocumented workers contribute annually, including to Social Security and other federal programs off-limits to them and enjoyed by Americans? Forget about it. Past cycles of mass deportation, including the 1950s-era Eisenhower plan that Trump has pointed to as an example of what he’d like to repeat, have made it clear it’s not to the benefit of U.S.-workers, despite claims otherwise.
“The idea that deportation helps US citizens has always been an illusion,” Ettlinger wrote. “It’s never worked before and it wouldn’t work this time.” Mass deportation hurts everybody.
