Trump mass deportation threats infuriate immigrant advocates

President-elect Trump’s pledge to enact mass deportations and end birthright citizenship, potentially affecting millions of U.S. citizens, is raising alarm bells among immigrant communities who fear an overzealous Trump administration could destroy countless families.

Trump outlined his deportation agenda on “Meet the Press” with Kristen Welker last week, doubling down on his position that 2024 election results mandate a draconian crackdown on immigrants.

Asked whether he would seek to deport all undocumented immigrants, including among otherwise law-abiding people and mixed-status families, Trump reverted to a binary law-and-order bromide, and a controversial stance on the overall economic impact of illegal immigration.

“You have no choice. First of all, they’re costing us a fortune. But we’re starting with the criminals, and we’ve got to do it. And then we’re starting with others, and we’re going to see how it goes,” he told Welker.

According to a Congressional Budget Office report from July, heightened immigration from 2021 to 2026 will result in an $897 billion reduction in the federal deficit in the 2024-2034 period, taking into account taxes paid by immigrants, government services rendered to them and their impact on the economy.

The report cautioned that the impact on local and state budgets could vary, a point that immigration restrictionists have made central to their economic argument for deporting millions of foreign-born workers.

But Trump went a step further, echoing incoming border czar Tom Homan on the idea that to avoid family separations, U.S. citizen family members of deportees should voluntarily leave the country, rather than be able to sponsor their family to remain in the United States.

That suggestion enraged immigrant and Latino groups, many of whom hold the position that mass deportations are ultimately geared toward ethnic segregation.

“Basically, he's saying, ‘Oh, if your parents are undocumented and you're 5 years old, you were born here,’ — just like my son was born here — ‘how about since I don't want to separate families, how about you go ahead and self-deport too?’ There's no such thing as deporting United States citizens. It’s ridiculous, idiotic, but it's also very telling of the bigotry and the deep hate for nonwhite Americans in this country. Every single person, regardless of party, should be in an uproar at this moment,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.).

Ramirez, whose Guatemalan mother crossed the border pregnant with her and whose husband was until recently a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipient, also panned Trump’s threat to reinterpret the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause as a shot across the bow against all foreign-born people in the United States.

“This man is talking about taking birthrights from United States citizens. What would preclude him from taking my husband's green card? No one at this point is safe under a Donald Trump presidency, not a U.S. citizen, not [a legal permanent resident] and certainly not an immigrant. We are living what seems to be, in my opinion, in my 41 years of life, the unimaginable.”

That sense of doom is shared by many in immigrant advocacy groups who fear that Trump, Homan and incoming deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller will have a sense of carte blanche authority in the early days of the incoming administration, economic and social impact notwithstanding.

“There’s a growing consensus that the Trump mass deportation agenda will hit American consumers and industries hard, but the scope of what Trump and his team are proposing goes well beyond the economic impact. Trump and allies are making clear their mass deportation agenda will include deporting U.S. citizens, including children, while aiming to gut a century and a half of legal and moral precedent on birthright citizenship. In total, their attacks go well beyond the narrow lens of immigration to the fundamental question of who gets to be an American," said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice.

That sense of free rein is being propped up by Republicans, who see November’s election results as a mandate to go hard on immigration enforcement.

“Listening to my Democratic colleagues, it’s as if Nov. 5 never occurred. That we haven’t had an election. That we haven’t had a referendum on the failed border policies of the Biden-Harris administration. Let’s be clear, the crisis at the southern border is entirely a problem caused by the Biden administration’s policies. It is a man-made disaster,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), speaking at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday about the possible effects of a mass deportation policy.

But the outrage from immigrant communities is not tied to the border — it’s about millions of immigrants throughout the country, documented and undocumented, and their U.S. citizen relatives who feel politically targeted.

Incoming administration officials are ratcheting up that feeling by publicly calling out sanctuary jurisdictions home to large undocumented and mixed-status populations.

Speaking at a holiday party hosted by the Law and Order PAC and the Northwest Side GOP Club in Chicago, Homan said that city would be ground zero for the deportation program.

"Chicago's in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks," he said, before threatening Mayor Brandon Johnson with prosecution if he impedes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from carrying out their new mission.

The border czar position has not in the past had prosecutorial powers, but ICE operations have often relied on creating a sense of fear in immigrant communities as a means of deterrence.

But immigrant advocates say that sense of fear also has detrimental effects on civic life, including economic output.

“Mass deportations and the climate of fear they would generate threaten our nation’s economic future by removing key workers from the country’s labor force who help strengthen the prosperity of all Americans, regardless of their background,” wrote Janet Murguía, president of UnidosUS, in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

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