Washington, DC —The third night of the RNC continued and even amped up the anti-immigrant ugliness we have been witnessing throughout the week. Among the lowlights:
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) continued the RNC’s ongoing and misleading “migrant crime” focus and embraced Trump’s unsparing mass deportation plan, starting the chant, “Send them Back!” – a phrase that RNC attendees then shouted repeatedly throughout the arena.
- Gleeful embrace of mass deportation by RNC attendees: In addition to the anti-immigrant ugliness on stage, the RNC attendees are openly embracing the same dark and destructive vision. From the above-mentioned chant of “Send them Back!” to the disturbing images of hundreds of pre-printed “Mass Deportation Now!” signs, it’s been a chilling snapshot of how the MAGA base not only supports the destructive and economically harmful Trump immigration vision but does so gleefully.
- Former ICE Director Tom Homan, whom Trump has already touted as leading ICE in a potential second term, whitewashed Trump’s real first term immigration record, including at the border; embraced “replacement theory” dog whistles, including equating immigration to “national suicide;” and reiterated his mass deportation pledge, saying to immigrants, “You better start packing now!” Homan recently has been making clear that the Trump mass deportations would be unsparing and include a focus on long-settled immigrants throughout America, stating, “People need to be deported…No one should be off the table” and noting, “Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen … They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“While we expected to hear lies and disinformation about immigrants, nothing could have prepared us for hearing thousands of people gleefully chanting “Send them back”. Last night’s spectacle made it plain that the Republican Party has fully embraced a radical and extreme position on immigration and an ethnic nationalist vision for the nation. And let’s be crystal clear on this: when they say “send them back,” they mean Dreamers, long-settled fathers and mothers of U.S. citizens, hard-working farmworkers, and fellow churchgoers and neighbors.
For anyone thinking this is just political messaging or only signs and rally chants that Republicans won’t really push for, this week should serve as a wake-up call and repudiation of that false comfort. This is the Republican Party of 2024 and it’s the single most consequential immigration, and economic, subject of this campaign. Republicans are telling us exactly who they are and what they plan to do. We should believe them. It’s a nationalist vision that we cannot afford to look away from.”
Key Resources
- America’s Voice breaks down the most important issues to watch re: immigration at the RNC: Immigration Memo: Key Questions at RNC Convention and RNC Cheat Sheet – When Trump and Republicans Say the Following on Immigration…
- Americans want citizenship for long-settled immigrants, not deportation. See the latest installment of Gallup’s annual immigration polling, highlighting that when offered an array of immigration policy options to choose between, support for a process for long-settled immigrants to become U.S. citizens remains at the top of the list of preferred policies and maintains an enduring and overwhelming majority of respondents. This support for citizenship – including and especially for Dreamers (81%) – is much higher than the support for deportation (47%). Similarly, by a 2:1 margin (64-32%), Americans think immigration is a “good thing” for America instead of a “bad thing” – this despite the barrage of negative attention and misinformation advanced over the past year.
- Mass Deportation and its Consequences: As America’s Voice describes in this detailed memo, Donald Trump and allies are reiterating their pledge of unsparing mass deportations in a Trump second term. It would include deploying red state National Guard troops in blue state cities and communities throughout America and promised mass detention camps run by the military. The proposed mass roundups and removals are not just talking points – there are real proposals backed by plans to put Trump’s vision into practice (also read the Niskanen Center’s assessment of Project 2025 and immigration).
- Notably, the Trump team is making clear that their pledged “LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY” would be unsparing, with targets including Dreamers and other long-settled immigrants, such as the spouses of U.S. citizens with more than 10 years in the U.S. – the group President Biden’s recent policy announcement addressed.
- In a Fox interview, Trump noted: “I’m gonna do the big deportation. The biggest ever … you’ll get rid of 10 really bad ones. And one really beautiful mother … it’s always gonna be tough.”
- Former ICE Director Tom Homan stated, “People need to be deported…No one should be off the table” and recently noted, “Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen … They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
- The economic toll of implementing this plan would be vast, with millions of native-born Americans losing their jobs and livelihoods; entire American industries gutted with untold ripple effects; all while millions of immigrant homeowners, entrepreneurs, essential workers, healthcare providers, and teachers would be uprooted from U.S. communities, along with an untold number of their family members and people assumed incorrectly to be undocumented but deported anyway. Read a deep-dive on the potential economic damage in this Washington Monthly column, “Trump’s Plans for Mass Deportation Would Be an Economic Disaster,” by Robert Shapiro, former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs.
- A video from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Speaking at a PIIE event on presidential candidate Donald Trump’s immigration proposals, Warwick J. McKibben said massive deportation of unauthorized workers would sharply reduce labor supply in mining, agriculture, services, and manufacturing of durable and nondurable goods. Employing a sophisticated “G-Cubed Model” to project the economic impact of two scenarios, McKibben concluded that such deportations would reduce real GDP by 12 percent if 7.5 million workers were deported and by 2.1 percent if 1.3 million were deported. Both scenarios would ignite serious inflation.
