Donald Trump and his allies have been claiming their “bloody” mass deportation agenda will prioritize criminals. As incoming “border czar” Tom Homan claimed, the focus will be on the “worst first.” But their day-one plans and prior track record tells the exact opposite story. The incoming administration’s top priority is to remove enforcement priorities and seek to target mothers of U.S. citizen children, hardworking taxpayers, and our law-abiding immigrant neighbors as part of their mass deportation scheme.
Trump has repeatedly admitted in campaign interviews that talk of deporting mothers isn’t going to win you a lot of support. So instead, they have sought to sell their mass deportation agenda by falsely asserting the prioritization of criminals. Incoming Vice President JD Vance stated that deportations would start with “the most violent criminals.” But as we have repeatedly noted, Vance and his fellow Republicans seem to be getting their plans confused with the long-held Democratic position.
The current Biden administration policy (and long-standing Democratic position) prioritizes those who are under arrest, in detention, and threaten public safety and national security. In the final guidance memo issued by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, it established three main categories for enforcement priorities:
- Those convicted of an aggravated felony and presented as a current risk to public safety
- Threats to national security
- And those arrested while entering the United States unlawfully
The Trump/Vance administration has promised to throw out those priorities with day-one executive action. As Reuters’ Ted Hesson reported: “Trump intends to scrap Biden administration guidance that prioritized people with serious criminal records for deportation and limited enforcement against non-criminals, they said.”
If Trump’s administration was truly going to target the “most violent criminals” for deportation, then the likely scenario would be that they do not need to change the current enforcement priorities of the Biden administration.
It makes political sense to assert a sensible and responsible approach, but it just makes it awkward when it’s the Democratic position and the exact opposite of the one they are proposing. It is a bit hard to reconcile with the incoming border czar’s comments that “no one is off the table” and promises to even deport U.S. citizen children with undocumented parents.
This promise to change enforcement priorities is not speculative; the first Trump administration did something similar. Shortly after taking office, the administration issued an “expanded” guidance of enforcement priorities. As the American Immigration Council wrote at the time:
“Whereas prior policies outlined a framework for prioritizing U.S. resources—such as emphasizing the removal of persons convicted of serious crimes—the Trump administration expanded ‘enforcement priorities’ so broadly as to render the term meaningless…In other words, all undocumented immigrants have become targets—even if they have lived in the United States for many years, have U.S.-born children, and have never had a run-in with law enforcement.
They went on to write:
“This shift away from enforcement priorities and into blind enforcement is socially destructive. At the most pragmatic level, it wastes finite law-enforcement resources on the apprehension and removal of people who represent no danger to public safety. More than that, immigration enforcement without priorities needlessly tears apart U.S. society itself. U.S. families, communities, and workplaces include immigrants and native-born citizens alike.”
Moreover, in 2017, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo revealed that attorneys for ICE were restricted from granting leniency, and even reopened closed cases that were granted leniency because all undocumented immigrants were deemed priorities for deportation. Several long-settled immigrants, from U.S. veterans to a new father to refugees fleeing religious persecution to moms, were part of Trump’s first mass deportation under his enforcement priorities. They had no criminal background or broken a single law but were sent away from their friends and loved ones.
As a Los Angeles Times analysis of the executive order on enforcement priorities in 2017 reported: “Far from targeting only ‘bad hombres,’ as Trump has said repeatedly, his new order allows immigration agents to detain nearly anyone they come in contact with who has crossed the border illegally. People could be booked into custody for using food stamps or if their child receives free school lunches”.
Yet, Trump/Vance administration promises to be worse the second time around.
Project 2025 proposed that “all ICE memoranda identifying ‘sensitive zones’ where ICE personnel are prohibited from operating should be rescinded,” a demand that the incoming administration is reportedly set to carry out. This means allowing raids at churches, hospitals, schools, and protests. In Trump’s first term, federal immigration agents were not allowed to arrest and detain those in sensitive locations, but they “intentionally tiptoed around the edges of the sensitive zones policy”:
- February 2017: ICE agents detained a group of six men who were leaving the hypothermia shelter at Rising Hope Mission Church in Virginia as soon as they crossed street
- January 2018: Several dads were detained after they dropped off their children at school or at the bus stop in New Jersey
- October 2018: An ambulance was stopped on the way to a hospital in South Texas after a patient needed to be transferred to a different hospital because a 10 year old girl with cerebral palsy and her parents were undocumented. Border Patrol agents followed the ambulance and waited to detain them as soon as they were released from the hospital
It is important to realize how the Republicans are framing who is considered a criminal. Republicans successfully managed to bring immigration as a top issue for voters, by fearmongering and posing immigrants as harmful and a threat to America. They have framed immigrants as “animals”, “not people”, “criminal gangs, rapists, drug dealers, and monsters” or just plainly “criminals” in the minds of Americans and media during this election cycle.
A long-term strategy that Trump started when he first ran has now fully come to fruition. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) already revealed the “not-so secret” secret that “every undocumented person…is a criminal…the solution? Deport them.” In Republicans’ view, all undocumented immigrants are considered criminals, even if they are long-term residents who have contributed greatly to our community and to the growth of America or they are married to U.S. citizens or have children who are U.S. citizens.
Under this enforcement guideline, mass deportation of our law-abiding immigrant neighbors is the end goal. And with the recently passed Ken Paxton Empowerment Act (AKA the Laken Riley Act) in the House, Republicans are one step closer to their main goal of legitimizing their mass deportation plans. This bill allows any accused immigrants to be detained without due process, stripping away their rights and making them criminals despite being innocent till proven guilty, as well as empowering extreme state attorneys general like Ken Paxton.
These are not dangerous, hardened criminals, but under Republicans’ microscope, all undocumented are considered criminals.
