A person holds a sign that reads "Mass Deportation Now" on the third day of the Republican National Convention in July. Leon Neal/Getty Images hide caption
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Leon Neal/Getty Images
A person holds a sign that reads "Mass Deportation Now" on the third day of the Republican National Convention in July.
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Donald Trump won the White House the first time in part by promising an aggressive crackdown on immigration.
"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on," he said at the time.
A controversial Muslim travel ban did later go into effect, and by the second year of his term the Trump administration was separating kids from parents at the border as part of the administration's "zero tolerance policy."
"Don't break the law. I mean, that's why they're separated — 'cause they're breaking the law," then Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in May 2018.
If Trump gets back in the White House, he's promising to go even further on immigration.
"As soon as I take the oath of office, we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country," he told a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan last month, repeating a promise that has become a familiar part of his rallies.
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Trump is taking the pledge on the road
At the Republican National Convention this summer, hundreds of attendees waved signs demanding "Mass Deportation Now!"
And all over the country, Trump's supporters applaud when he repeats this promise.
He was greeted with cheers at a rally in Nevada when he said this: "When I'm re-elected, we will begin — and we have no choice — the largest deportation operation in American history."
And he got more cheers at a rally in Montana last week when he said: "We will seal the border, stop the invasion and send the illegal aliens back home where they belong."
Now, Trump's former immigration advisors are laying out ambitious plans for a second term. That includes Tom Homan, the former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who said this at the National Conservatism Conference last month:
"They ain't seen s*** yet. Wait 'till 2025 ... Trump comes back in January, I'll be on his heels coming back. And I will run the biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen."
Two NPR reporters have been following this story closely: Joel Rose, who covered immigration during Trump's presidency, and Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, an immigration correspondent.
They have been looking through internal emails and documents from Trump's time in office — obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — which shed light on how realistic Trump's plan is to radically expand the United States' deportation system.
What the documents show
The documents demonstrate how immigration authorities scrambled from the first days of the Trump administration to scale up their detention capacity in response to requests from the White House.
Yet they also reveal how bureaucratic hurdles slowed the process, limiting the administration's ability to ramp up immigration enforcement to match Trump's tough rhetoric and stated goals.
In one example, in January of 2017, Trump signed several executive orders on immigration, and the very next day the ICE official in charge of immigration detention sought to begin expanding detention facilities. Rose told All Things Considered:
"ICE did add about 15,000 detention beds under President Trump, which is a jump of about 35%. But that took years. It was not as fast or as easy as his advisers may have wanted. And I think that's reason to be skeptical about Trump's promises this time around."
And Martínez-Beltrán says Trump's rhetoric, while sweeping, has been vague:
"He has vowed to deport anywhere from 15 to 20 million unauthorized migrants. But that number is way higher than what the Department of Homeland Security reports. The agency estimates there are about 11 million unlawful migrants."
Listen to the full Consider This episode to hear Rose and Martínez-Beltrán break down what the documents show, how this is playing out, and what former ICE officials have to say.
This episode was produced by Marc Rivers. It was edited by Courtney Dorning, Alfredo Carbajal and Eric Westervelt. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
