Andrea Castillo | (TNS) Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump has promised that, if reelected, he will kick out millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
Trump and his surrogates have offered sparse details for how he would carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history,” but have cemented the goal as a top priority. What is known: The strategy would rely on military troops, friendly state and local law enforcement, and wartime powers.
“No one’s off the table,” Tom Homan, Trump’s former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in July. “If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said the administration would start by deporting immigrants who have committed crimes.
At a campaign rally earlier this month in Aurora, Colo., Trump said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 “to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.”
The ex-president went on to say that he would send “elite squads” of federal law enforcement officers to “hunt down, arrest and deport” every migrant gang member. Those who attempt to return to the U.S. would be served with 10-year prison sentences without parole, he said, adding that any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen or law enforcement officer would face the death penalty.
How many people would Trump go after?
It’s unclear.
In May, Trump told Time magazine he would target 15 million to 20 million people who he said are living illegally in the U.S. The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates the actual number to be about 11 million as of 2022. More than 2 million people have entered the country illegally since then.
“Let’s start with 1 million,” Vance told ABC News in August.
During his entire presidency, from January 2017 to January 2021, Trump deported about 1.5 million immigrants, according to a Migration Policy Institute analysis of federal figures — far fewer than the 2 million to 3 million he speculated about deporting in a 2016 interview as president-elect. The Biden administration is on pace to match Trump’s deportation numbers.
What powers would Trump invoke to justify deportations?
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 allows the president to arrest, imprison or deport immigrants from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime. Congress passed the law as part of the Alien and Sedition Acts — four laws that tightened restrictions on foreign-born Americans and limited criticism of the government, when the country was on the brink of war with France.
The law has been used three times in American history: during the War of 1812 and World War I and after the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.
During WWI, federal authorities placed 6,300 “enemy aliens” — many from Germany — into internment camps.
By the end of WWII, more than 31,000 people from Japan, Germany and Italy, as well as some Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, had been interned at camps and military facilities — in addition to the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans who were forcibly …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
