15 million, 20 million, 30 million, or one of every six people currently living in the US: these are the numbers the incoming Trump administration has been using to project the sort of scale they hope for from their mass deportation regime. These eye-popping numbers are likely a logistical impossibility, especially in a limited four-year timeline. But if we get too hung up on their numbers, we risk missing the more crucial part of this story. What makes the incoming Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda such a radical departure from the past is the orientation to the issue. It isn’t just about the millions they want to deport, but who will make it on the target list, the focus they will give the agenda, and how they will carry it out.
Despite what their propaganda campaign says, this will be a mass separation of American families targeting hard-working, taxpaying, and long-settled members of our communities. This is their top priority, not boosting the economy for working people, but wrecking their pocketbooks in favor of ethnic purges. It is about reorienting the incredible functions of the United States government to “fix” the “problem” of too many Americans they do not consider “real” Americans.
How many millions will Trump’s mass deportation machine capture in 2025? We honestly don’t know. There are obviously serious logistical and financial hurdles to even get past the two million mark. But what we do know is that Trump has promised that the mass deportation agenda is “not a question of a price tag,” asserting the chilling ultimatum that “we have no choice.” And that the white nationalist Stephen Miller, who Trump has named as Deputy Chief of Staff, has called for the mass deportation program to be “greater than any national infrastructure project” in American history. Miller has also called for “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants facing deportation, to which Texas has eagerly offered up land for Miller’s camps. Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham announced that they will use their taxpayer dollars to set up “detention hubs” at the state’s “recently purchased 1,400-acres.” They are already in talks to expand these deportation camps in other locations besides Texas. Private prison stocks increased after Trump announced that Tom Homan, the former acting ICE director and previous mastermind of family separation, was selected as the next “border czar.” Homan warned on X that “Mass deportation is coming. Message to every illegal alien mooching off America.”
Will the lack of a price tag, and willing red-state partners generate the unseen scale of infrastructure needed to meet the promised scale? Maybe.
Hopefully, the combination of institutional checks limits the sheer numbers the mass deportation machine is able to sweep up. But it is worth considering the dystopian fantasy Trump and his allies are promising to erect. They are arguing to refocus the resources of the state, investing not in Social Security, Medicare, housing, veterans’ affairs, education, FEMA, job training, etc. etc., but diverting their main attention instead to ramp up the mass deportation machine. They are arguing that money is no object, no project too grand for the federal government when it comes to rounding up our neighbors, but not on the actual infrastructure projects that will benefit the average American, like fixing roads, increasing internet access, improving the train system, repairing bridges, or getting lead out of the water.
However, the Trump administration’s ability to overcome the infrastructure barriers isn’t the only thing at stake here.
Last week, Trump doubled-down on his campaign promise that he will use the military to carry out his mass deportation plans by declaring a national emergency, quote posting “TRUE!!!” on Truth Social in response to a post by radical right-wing activist Tom Fitton that stated that Trump is “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”
Trump has, for years, promoted the white nationalist “invasion” conspiracy that falsely asserts that immigration is as threatening as a military invasion, and made it a recurring theme of his campaign. He frequently described the millions of long-settled immigrants in the U.S. as “invaders”. At his campaign rallies, Trump promised to “rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered.” In a similar sentiment, Miller and Trump rebranded Election Day as “Liberation Day,” asserting that “the occupation ends…[by] finding the criminal gangs, rapists, drug dealers, and monsters that have murdered our citizens and sending them home.” The rhetoric of war to describe their mass deportation agenda is no accident. Instead, the assertion of the conspiracy theory that immigrants constitute a literal invasion and as the “enemy from within” provides a rationalization for deploying the military on US streets targeting US homes.
While under the pretext of going after immigrants, Trump has been quite clear that his designs for directing the military against the American people are much more expansive. In a rally in Iowa earlier this year, he already promised to use the military to “get crime out of our cities” and “replace local law enforcement in democratic cities to squelch protests.”
Trump is out for revenge on those who went against him and his administration, especially on states and cities led by Democratic officials.
The mass deportation agenda is also providing the pretext for using the power of the purse or even the prosecution of political opponents. And they already started firing warning shots at Democratically controlled states and localities. Like Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who called to “deport all illegal aliens” and “defund all officials who don’t comply,” reinvigorating the call to withhold federal funding to states and municipalities for services unrelated to immigration unless they cooperate with the mass deportation machine. Taking it one step further, a top advisor to Stephen Miller’s organization, American First Legal, went on Fox News this week to put governors of blue states and mayors of so-called sanctuary cities on notice: “If you harbor illegal aliens, if you transport illegal aliens into this country, then you can be prosecuted for a felony.”
The incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, has used recent Fox News appearances to issue a similar chilling warning. When asked by Fox News what they were going to do if blue state officials won’t comply, he said he will “send in twice [the] amount of resources,” arguing that resisting would just mean ”more agents in the community,” and that such efforts would be just “hurting themselves.” Such authoritarian tactics are not new to Homan. He has previously called for prosecuting the leaders of so-called sanctuary cities. When Denver Mayor Mike Johnston (D) announced that he would protect immigrants from mass deportation, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) warned that if Denver Mayor “resists,” he “would be removed from office”. A deeply concerning threat that has chilling implications far beyond their immigration agenda.
On the other hand, while Trump and his allies boast of indiscriminate deportations, separating families, and kicking people out of their homes in numbers going into the millions, the same incoming officials are joined by other Republicans to promise that the 20 million number is an exaggeration. They claim their mass deportation agenda is about targeting criminals. But this is a propaganda piece to sell mass deportations. The coordinated disinformation effort from the Trump campaign to Republicans on the Hill to right-wing influencers is to make Americans view immigrants as criminals, which is critical to their mass deportation agenda. It allows them to go after all immigrants, not just adjudicated criminals. Trump has argued that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” with mass deportation as the only way to “save this country.”
Republican Members of Congress have been trying to make this point explicitly following the election as they ready for the mass deportation agenda. Like Rep. Andy Biggs and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), the latter of whom stated that “illegal immigration is a CRIME. It’s not a ‘human right’ or a ‘guarantee’ for unknown foreigners to invade our country without proper vetting.”
Biggs and Luna make clear what is different. It’s not just the scale that makes mass deportation but the who. Long-term residents, Dreamers, nearly 1.4 million immigrants who have DACA or TPS (528,300 DACA recipients and 863,880 TPS holders), or even the “5.1 million U.S. citizen children living with an undocumented family member” all are in danger of deportation and “no one is off the table.”
Even one of their own, Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, understands what that shift means, even if he pretends like it isn’t happening. He argued in a recent interview that if we’re deporting “the guy that’s picking tomatoes or the nurse at the local hospital and we’re not going after the convicted criminal, then our government has failed us.” But his party’s number one promise is to fail the American families and change the fabric of who is American.
Whether or not the Trump administration can displace millions of people from their homes is a serious question. And while the logistics and current law present real barriers to their agenda, it’s important to see the broader range of consequences beyond the numbers. There is a much bigger ploy the right is aiming toward. Mass deportation is a vehicle used to bring authoritarian power and process to the US, turning the power of the federal government to the challenge of ethnic purges.
Mass deportation will be horrifying for undocumented immigrants and their loved ones, but U.S. citizens not connected to the community should also brace themselves for how this agenda will impact their everyday lives.
