According to the New York Times, former US President Donald Trump has a plan to intensify his immigration crackdown if he wins the 2024 election. The plan, which was revealed by some of his advisers, including Stephen Miller, who was in charge of his immigration policies in his first term, would involve massive raids and detentions of undocumented immigrants in large camps before deporting them.
The Times called Trump’s plan “a historic attack on immigration” and said it would target millions of people every year, even those who have lived in the United States for a long time.
Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, would also bring back his ban on the entry of people from some Muslim-majority countries, the newspaper said.
The report also said that Trump would restore other harsh policies, such as denying asylum claims during the Covid-19 pandemic, but this time he would justify the rejections by claiming that migrants have other contagious diseases.
The newspaper said that Trump wants to accelerate deportations by using a huge increase of a type of removal that does not give migrants a chance to have a fair hearing.
The report said that Trump would assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in conducting large-scale arrests and detentions of undocumented immigrants by transferring federal agents and giving authority to local police and National Guard soldiers offered by states controlled by Republicans.
He would ease the strain on ICE detention facilities by building huge camps to hold detainees while their cases are processed as they await deportation.
To underwrite the massive operation if Congress refused, Trump would redirect Pentagon funds as he did with his border wall in his first term, the Times said.
Trump hinted at his plan at a September rally in Iowa, said the newspaper, which quoted him as saying that he would conduct “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” along the lines of the “Eisenhower model.”
That was a 1954 campaign named after an ethnic slur – Operation Wetback – to detain and expel Mexican immigrants.