The American Right’s Campaign to Sell the Horrors of Mass Deportation
On the Thursday after the election, Donald Trump did an interview with NBC News where he reiterated that his nativist agenda would be a top priority, saying there is “no price tag” on his violent mass deportation regime. Less a statement about dollars and cents than a ringing signal of the insatiable desire to pursue the ethnic cleansing of their mass deportation agenda at any cost.
The American Immigration Council did, however, find that price tag – $88 billion annually. That estimate is just the straight logistical cost and does not include the rolling residual effects of rounding up millions of our neighbors providing essential work that keeps the nation humming. As they note in their report, that kind of money could buy quite a bit over the years for the things working people really need and want. Noting that over a decade that money could:
“Build over 40,450 new elementary schools in communities around the nation.
Construct over 2.9 million new homes in communities around the nation.
Fund the Head Start program for nearly 79 years.”
A bit of a reminder that every tax dollar going to the unnecessary show-me-your-papers mass deportation force is a choice of where to marshall the vast resources of the federal government.
But it is also this massive price tag that some Republicans are trying to use to spin the lie that mass deportations won’t be that bad. Like Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who got himself an Axios headline by seemingly telling an audience his Party’s signature campaign promise is unworkable. "We don't have the resources for that. I don't see that happening," Crenshaw said of the incoming Trump administration's stated mass deportation agenda.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported: “Trump’s advisers are discussing issuing a national emergency declaration at the border on his first day in office, which his team thinks would allow him to move money from the Pentagon to pay for wall construction and to assist with immigrant detention and deportation.” Again, Trump has promised that the cost is not in his calculation despite whatever weak assurances Crenshaw thinks he can provide.
But Crenshaw paired his cost downplay with Republicans' other argument not to worry because they are just focused on the “criminals.” "There's plenty of deportation to do prior to getting to that point, so I just don't think anyone should fear this idea," Crenshaw said. Or, as incoming border czar Tom Homan has disingenuously tried to claim, the focus will be on the “worst first.”
It is worth taking a beat to consider why Republicans are trying to run a messaging campaign downplaying their signature promise after an electoral win. It is likely because they, too, realize that their plan to deploy the military into the streets of our neighborhoods to conduct mass round-ups of our hardworking, law-abiding immigrant neighbors and wreck the economy for working people is likely to see a sharp backlash.
But if they can convince the American people of the dehumanizing lie that immigrants equal criminals, they will be able to minimize the political fallout of their mass deportation designs. As the Republican Governors Association wrote earlier this week, “Democrat Governor @maura_healey is touting that she will snub President Trump’s plan to deport ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CRIMINALS. This is the out-of-touch agenda of the Democrats. No wonder the American people rejected it wholeheartedly.” Or as Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) more explicitly put it, “every ‘undocumented person’—to use terms the Left can understand—is a criminal.” While, of course, there are immigrants who have committed horrific crimes that should be deported, but the goal of the GOP and the American right is to dehumanize immigrants as a group, depicting them all as criminals as a class, normalizing the racist lie that it's something in their “genes” that makes them inherently criminal and needs to be purged from the nation. This dehumanization is the point. It is to turn our neighbors and co-workers into criminals to be feared and disappeared. It is the pretext that creates the political conditions that make mass ethnic purges possible. People sometimes wonder how past atrocities were carried out in full view. This is how.
No one should fall for the trap that mass deportation won’t be that bad because it won’t be that extensive and just focus on the bad ones. Not least of which is because they have also told us the exact opposite.
As Reuters’ Ted Hesson recently reported: “Trump intends to scrap Biden administration guidance that prioritized people with serious criminal records for deportation and limited enforcement against non-criminals, they said.” Nothing like saying you are prioritizing criminals while also promising to end prioritization. As their Project 2025 outlined (to which Tom Homan was a contributor), they plan to remove not only the priorities on who to target for deportation but also on sensitive locations, allowing them to conduct raids on schools, churches, hospitals and protests. Not to mention a 60-minutes interview Homan gave right before the election, where he defended deporting the grandmas and U.S. citizen children of the undocumented community. But to Homan, a relation to someone without immigration status is criminal enough.
Other Republicans like Senator-elect Jim Banks (R-IN) have gone on to reiterate the indiscriminate pledge to deport 15 to 30 million people. As the American Immigration Council noted in their report, the “entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022, comprising every person held in local, county, state, and federal prisons and jails, was 1.9 million people.” Bank’s told CNN’s Dana Bash he wants to see at least 15 million deported under Trump’s watch, saying “the goal should be to deport every illegal in this country we can find.” An accurate translation would be “the goal is to deport every second-grade teacher with DACA, every undocumented farmworker whether in the central Valley of California or dairy farms in Wisconsin, every home healthcare aid with TPS, and every undocumented spouse of a US citizen.”
This impossibly large number is also cited as part of the logistical hurdles that will limit the effects of mass deportation. It is true that Trump’s mass deportation regime will likely not come close to their goal. That should provide little comfort. The exaggerated number plays two roles that are more relevant than a statement of practicality. (1) It signals the indiscriminate nature in which the Trump administration is approaching mass deportation. The number is sweeping with little attention to the details, signaling what we can and should expect as they roll out their mass deportation regime. (2) Because it is an unachievable number, the threat never goes away. If the benchmark is unrealistic, the looming threat of the “criminal illegals just around the next corner” can remain as a fear tactic simultaneously with the assertion that the Trump administration is implementing the “largest deportation operation in US history” and they just need a bit more money and a bit more of roll back on Americans’ democratic freedoms to keep us safe from that threat.
The simultaneous message that it won’t be that bad either because of preventive logistics or because of the people who are targeted is a double-edged sword of dehumanization that will drive the communications strategy for the rollout of the mass deportation agenda.
Why does this matter?
Their propaganda campaign is an essential component of executing the mass deportation with the least amount of political backlash. Understanding their strategy suggests their vulnerability. The mass deportation agenda will come at a massive upfront cost, create serious moral consternation of the separation of American families, and exacerbate the pain points of working people's personal economics. These suggest the possibility for a massive backlash to a driving core of Trump’s second term. But if they can execute their strategy without interruption, too many of the American people can be convinced that mass deportation isn’t all that bad and it's only targeting those “bad” immigrants and economic pressures can continue and can be blamed on the bad ones yet to be removed.
Only if we can see through their strategy, can we devise the right strategies to combat it.