Washington, DC —During a joint Fox News interview with J.D. Vance, Donald Trump again made clear that his proposed “largest deportation operation in the history of our country” would be unsparing and indiscriminate in targeting immigrants, noting:
“As soon as we grab, perhaps, we take a woman with two children, three children… she shouldn’t be here but she’s a nice woman, the children are beautiful … you’re right, it’s a hard thing to do, harder than a long time ago with Dwight Eisenhower … nobody complained, in those days, we had a country that was much different.”
The latest admission reinforces earlier points that both Trump and his proposed ICE leader Tom Homan have made, about the unsparing nature of proposed second term mass roundups, mass detentions, and mass deportations – targeting not only the recent arrivals who have been flashpoints in recent years, but also long-settled immigrants living in families with U.S. citizens throughout America.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“If you thought the gleeful ‘send them back’ chants and ‘mass deportation now’ signs at the RNC were all bluster and not real, believe Donald Trump when he speaks. Former President Trump is openly admitting that moms with children are among the targets of his proposed mass purge.
There is nothing hidden and no subtext about the proposed second term plans and the sweeping round ups, camps, and military-style raids they are preparing to unleash. The anti-immigrant focus of the right wing is trying to rid the nation from those they see as ‘poisoning the blood,’ and the reality is that everyone will be made worse off if they execute even a small percentage of what they have in mind. Mass deportations were a failed and racist policy in the 1950s and have no place in 21st century America.
All this while fresh estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show that immigration is helping to boost the economy, keep inflation in check and drive down federal deficits. There shouldn’t be any confusion about the potential devastation that these mass deportations would wreak on the U.S. workforce and economy, divert law enforcement away from fighting crime, and violently disrupt families and communities throughout America.”
Several new commentaries, below, highlight the prospect of these mass deportations and capture the chilling echoes of the proposals, the damage on our economy, and the impact on America’s status as a “global beacon of freedom” that would result:
- Andrea Pitzer, an author who has written a book on concentration camps, writes a Scientific American essay, “Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History,” noting that “Trump’s language about immigrants ‘poisoning’ the U.S. repeats past rhetoric that led to civilian detention camps, with horrific, tragic results … Unleashed on anything close to the scale under discussion, the project Trump and his henchmen are proposing will be lethal to the targeted groups, catastrophic to the stability of the country and extremely difficult to undo.”
- Murad Awawdeh, president of NYIC Action, writes in a Newsweek op-ed that notes of Trump’s mass deportation and broader second term anti-immigrant vision: “Together, these proposals will create a more isolated United States—one that rejects the strength of our diversity and abandons our longtime status as a global beacon of hope and freedom. To remove immigrants from the American story is to remove the force that gives our country strength, vibrancy and economic might.”
- Also read Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, who writes, “Immigration Is Great for Jobs, Actually,” noting about the positive economic contributions of immigrants. This follows up on his previous column about the efforts to drive a wedge between African American voters and immigrants based on a faulty understanding of the economics of immigration. Other leading economists have made clear, meanwhile, about the catastrophic economic impact of mass deportations (see here and here for examples).
