Bulwark Takes: Inside Trump’s Brutal Anti-Immigrant Agenda

Podcast Host: Bill Kristol
Guest: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (Senior Fellow, American Immigration Council)
Date: November 30, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode offers a deep-dive analysis of the Trump administration's intensified anti-immigration agenda. Bill Kristol sits down with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a leading immigration policy expert, to break down both the enforcement "crackdown" ramping up across the country and the lesser-understood legislative, legal, and bureaucratic maneuvers targeting millions of immigrants and their families. The conversation spans enforcement statistics, TPS (Temporary Protected Status) and its sudden revocation, draconian restrictions on asylum and refugee programs, the disturbing rise of "remigration" rhetoric, and the profound social consequences for immigrants—legal and undocumented—and American society at large.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Escalating Internal Enforcement (ICE, DHS)

• Operation Midway & Beyond: While named enforcement blitzes have concluded, overall activity is higher than ever, powered by a massive budget increase ($75 billion for internal enforcement, $45 billion for detention, $30 billion for other functions) from the July “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” [02:33]
• Detention Beds and Arrests Soaring: Detention capacity has jumped from ~40,000 to ~70,000 beds and is expected to double by year-end. Arrests and detentions are increasing monthly, with forty percent of detainees now held without any criminal record. [03:39]

  “The number of people in detention with no criminal record whatsoever…has increased by a thousand percent since Trump took office.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [04:55]

• Nature of Immigration-Related Crimes: The majority of held individuals with “criminal” history are there for minor or nonviolent offenses, such as traffic violations or misdemeanor illegal entry. Only about 5% have serious violent convictions. [05:49]

2. Deportation Numbers vs. Rhetoric

• Population in Crosshairs: Trump administration touts wildly inflated numbers (20-50 million), but consensus population of undocumented immigrants is around 14-15 million (even right-leaning groups admit no more than 18 million). [06:53]
• Real vs. Claimed Deportations: The government claims over half a million deported and 2 million “self-deported,” but hard data suggests around 300,000 actual deportations. Many self-deportation estimates are dubious and based on unreliable data. [07:12, 08:44]
• Scale and Societal Impact: Even at a rate of a million deportations a year, it would take a decade or more for mass expulsion of the undocumented, fundamentally altering the social fabric—especially in places like Los Angeles, where up to 1 in 10 are undocumented. [11:07–13:36]

  “You are talking about trying to kick out huge parts of the country, entire neighborhoods worth of people.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [12:07]

3. Revoking Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

• Mass "De-Legalization": Over 1 million people, primarily Haitians and Venezuelans, have suddenly lost their legal status—many of whom have lived and worked here legally, paying taxes for more than a decade. [13:36–16:48]
• Motivation and Consequences: TPS is being ended not because of improved conditions abroad, but because “we just don’t want these people here.” This leaves longtime residents, including “the most vetted people in the country,” instantly undocumented. [14:04, 16:48]

  “At that day, you know, 12:01am, the next day you're no longer here legally, you no longer have the right to work. You have to leave.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [17:06]

• Community Impact: Many will not leave, becoming undocumented, and the resulting disruption is already playing out in families and communities—especially as more TPS protections are scheduled to expire. [17:18–20:23, 21:07]

4. Collapse of Asylum and Refugee Programs

• Refugee Admissions Slashed: The U.S. refugee admissions program, long a bipartisan tradition, is essentially being ended except for a handful of South Africans, as part of a broader move to prioritize certain nationalities. [22:06]

  “They are really gunning to eliminate asylum as a viable path to ever remaining in the United States.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [23:32]

• Crackdown Post-Tragedy: High-profile crimes by recent arrivals are being invoked to justify unprecedented “retrospective reviews” of hundreds of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and green card holders from “disfavored” countries. [24:10, 32:19]

  “They have ordered a re check of every refugee who came into the country. Over 200,000 refugees, every person granted asylum…a potential effort to…deny people their green cards, their asylum, their refugee status.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [32:19]

5. Extreme Anti-Immigration Rhetoric: “Remigration” and the Slippery Slope

• “Remigration” Defined & Embraced: The term, imported from the European far-right, refers to the expulsion not just of undocumented immigrants, but also legal residents and even citizens of foreign descent—an ethnic cleansing concept now being echoed by DHS and the State Department. [38:27–40:00]

  “It is very clearly a wink at this more aggressive attitude of ethnic cleansing.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [39:03]

• Chilling Presidential Rhetoric: Trump now slanders all foreign-born Americans (including his own wife and in-laws) as welfare cheats, criminals, or insane—a marked escalation to essentially questioning the Americanness of 53 million residents, of whom half are naturalized citizens. [41:04]

  “The strength of America is that we are the strongest assimilation engine in the history of the planet.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [26:22]

• Historical Parallels: The conversation evokes the xenophobia of the 1910s-1920s and admits past “ethnic purges” in U.S. history—Japanese internment, Chinese Exclusion—but notes we have never seen a president so openly embrace rhetoric of mass expulsion. [43:24–44:54]

  “We haven't had, to my knowledge, a president…embracing the notion that if you came from abroad, you're less of an American than if you've been here for, I don't know how many generations.”
  —Bill Kristol [44:54]

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Detention Statistics:

  “The number of people in detention with no criminal record whatsoever…has increased by a thousand percent since Trump took office.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [04:55]

• On Human Cost:

  “You are talking about trying to kick out huge parts of the country, entire neighborhoods worth of people… the ripple effects impact pretty much everybody.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [12:07]

• On TPS Revocation:

  “At that day, you know, 12:01am, the next day you're no longer here legally, you no longer have the right to work.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [17:06]

• On Changing American Ideals:

  “We said in 1965, the civil rights era, that we will not judge people based on where they are born—that every person can become an American.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [26:17]

• On "Remigration":

  “It is very clearly a wink at this more aggressive attitude of ethnic cleansing.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [39:03]

• On Social Climate:

  “We are now at a point where 60% of Latinos say that they think next year will be worse for Latinos than the last.”
  —Aaron Reichlin-Melnick [48:06]

Key Timestamps

• [02:33]—Enforcement ramping up, Operation Midway and new budgets
• [04:55]—Detention growth: 40% with no criminal record
• [06:53]—Realistic size of undocumented population vs. inflated rhetoric
• [11:07-12:07]—Societal transformation and scale of proposed deportations
• [13:36-16:48]—TPS rollbacks and their immediate effects
• [22:06-24:10]—End of broad-based refugee and asylum programs
• [32:19]—Retrospective vetting of recent arrivals; threat of mass status withdrawal
• [38:27-41:14]—Emergence and dangers of “remigration” rhetoric; slandering 53 million “foreigners”
• [48:06]—Latino communities’ growing fear for the future
• [48:42]—Congressional funding realities and the road ahead

Conclusion

This episode provides a sobering, fact-filled picture of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant project—from the mechanical ramp-up of raids, detentions, and deportations, to the bureaucratic evisceration of established humanitarian pathways and the normalization of ethnic-cleansing rhetoric at the highest levels. Both Kristol and Reichlin-Melnick emphasize the real and growing fear among immigrants, the long-term damage to America’s fabric, and the urgent need for both attention and congressional action.

The conversation is urgent, policy-heavy, and animated by a sense of both historical perspective and deep concern.