Trump’s mass deportation will be a humanitarian and economic disaster

It is very difficult to explain just how atrocious Trump’s second term immigration policies will be on every level. But Radley Balko has the most comprehensive attempt to explain it that I’ve seen yet:

Miller also wants to end birthright citizenship (more on that in a moment), and during the first Trump administration pushed a “denaturalization” program to strip naturalized immigrants of their citizenship.

Last year, a coalition of MAGA factions put together “Project 2025,” their blueprint for a second Trump term. It’s basically a roadmap to autocracy. And they make no secret of the fact that they want to do away with legal immigration — and nonwhite legal immigration in particular.

The Project 2025 plan would end the only legal way for seasonal and agricultural workers to come to the U.S. to work. It would also effectively end the H1-B visas that allow immigrants to work in fields like tech, engineering, and medicine — most of whom come from India or China. They want to end humanitarian programs that grant sanctuary for refugees fleeing war or natural disasters, and suspend all visas to any country that the administration deems uncooperative in accepting deportations. They want to screen visa applicants for ideology, barring entry and terminating the visas of people Miller considers politically impure. Miller told the New York Times that the administration would also invoke a 1798 law that allows federal officials to deport immigrants without due process during wartime, taking the broad view that drug cartels are waging a war against the United States.

The Project 2025 plan also calls for cutting all federal aid to colleges and universities that provide financial aid to undocumented students, including DACA recipients — the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. It would cruelly tie all sorts of unrelated federal aid — including emergency aid after natural disasters — to state and municipal cooperation on immigration enforcement. The plan would require at least 70 percent of the staff of any federal contractor to be U.S. citizens — not legal residents, but U.S. citizens. As the Niskanen Center puts it, “the Mandate aims to demolish the American immigration system, coerce states and localities into cooperating with administrative schemes, and intimidate immigrants present in the United States.”

They deportation army Miller and Trump want to assemble would be larger than any police force in the federal government, and if they get their way, would likely exceed the size of the U.S. Army itself. It would be populated with Trump loyalists excited by the idea of breaking up families and dumping peaceful undocumented people in countries they barely know.

Trump approached the presidency like he ran his businesses — like a mob boss. He thought the Justice Department should have been his personal law firm, and has vowed to weaponize it against his opponents should he win again. It isn’t at all difficult to imagine how, once in place, this deportation force might be used to enforce Trump’s other authoritarian impulses and campaign promises, like infiltrating blue cities to “fight crime,’“ arrest homeless people, or to beat — and possibly shoot — people who stage protests against his policies.

Deporting even a fraction of 15 million people would also wreck the economy. Inflation would soar (especially when combined with Trump’s plan to slap a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on imports), and the U.S. would likely spiral into a recession, possibly a depression.

Naturally, House Speaker Mike Johnson has expressed his enthusiastic support.

Trump and Miller aren’t going to deport 15 million people in four years. It just isn’t possible. But the important thing — the thing that ought to be immediately disqualifying — is that they plan to try.

There will be an inverse Pelosi when people see what’s in it and don’t like it — it will be particularly amazing in the eyes of history that voters obsessed with inflation delivered the White House to Donald Trump again — but alas there are no refunds, and the countless ruined lives can’t be brought back to what they were.