10 months ago
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Taking on Guardian columnist Margaret Sullivan’s challenge to illuminate “the crucial importance of this election and the dangers of a Trump win”, we begin today with Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times and their reporting on Number 45’s immigration plans should he win the 2024 presidential election.
He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.
To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.
To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized. [...]
Since Mr. Trump left office, the political environment on immigration has moved in his direction. He is also more capable now of exploiting that environment if he is re-elected than he was when he first won election as an outsider.
Millions per year. Millions.
