Inside Donald Trump’s Mass-Deportation Plans

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour: Inside Donald Trump’s Mass-Deportation Plans

Hosted by David Remnick, featuring Jonathan Blitzer

Introduction

In the December 6, 2024 episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, host David Remnick delves into the intricate and contentious topic of immigration policy under Donald Trump's administration. Joining him is Jonathan Blitzer, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Everyone who is Gone Is Here, Blitzer provides an in-depth analysis of Trump's aggressive deportation agenda and its far-reaching implications.

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Campaign Strategies and Democratic Missteps

Remnick opens the discussion by examining the Democratic Party's handling of immigration during the recent campaign cycle. He questions whether the Democrats, particularly the Biden administration, failed to address immigration adequately, thereby providing fertile ground for Trump's robust deportation promises.

Jonathan Blitzer ([03:05]) asserts, "I definitely think the Democrats and Biden specifically miscalculated in thinking that if they put their heads down and didn't talk about this, the issue would somehow pass or it would kind of dissolve in the general ether."

Blitzer critiques the Democratic approach, highlighting the complexity of conveying nuanced immigration policies compared to the Republicans' straightforward and forceful messaging. He points out that Democrats struggled to balance humaneness with pragmatism, resulting in insufficient communication that Republicans capitalized on with their clear-cut stance on border security.

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Biden Administration’s Immigration Policies and Political Fallout

Blitzer outlines two major policy miscalculations by the Biden administration. First, the continuation of stringent Trump-era policies without an effective system for orderly deportations. Second, the actions of Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, who bused thousands of migrants to blue states, exacerbating public concern and influencing voter behavior.

At [05:10], Remnick notes, "And DeSantis as well." Blitzer responds, emphasizing Greg Abbott's significant role in transforming immigration into a central political issue through these disruptive migrant dispersals.

Blitzer ([06:20]) explains, "The Biden administration essentially was defensive and allowed someone like Greg Abbott to really run the table on them."

This failure to proactively manage the influx led to a perception of an ongoing crisis, particularly in states like New York, which Blitzer links to shifts in voter behavior in blue states ([07:06]).

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Trump’s Deportation Agenda: Rhetoric vs. Reality

As the discussion shifts to the incoming Trump administration, Blitzer expresses uncertainty about the feasibility of executing mass deportations as promised. He acknowledges the logistical challenges but warns of the severe social and economic impacts regardless of the exact numbers.

At [10:25], Remnick quotes Stephen Miller: "We are going to deport up to a million people a year," prompting Blitzer ([11:08]) to dissect the statement, noting the ambitious and likely unattainable nature of such a target. He underscores the complexity of coordinating mass deportations and the probable overreach of Trump’s projections.

Blitzer ([13:11]) counters Miller’s claims by highlighting that immigrant populations generally commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens, dispelling the notion that undocumented immigrants predominantly consist of violent criminals.

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Historical Context: Operation Wetback and Potential Repercussions

Blitzer draws parallels between Trump's planned deportation campaigns and the historical Operation Wetback of the 1950s, which led to the deportation of over a million people, including many U.S. citizens, through racially motivated mass roundups. He warns that Trump's policies aim to replicate this dark period, causing immense human suffering and societal disruption.

At [18:21], Blitzer reflects, "That operation, Operation Wetback during the Eisenhower era is the only precedent, really, for just the sheer scale and volume of deportations that the Trump administration wants to carry out."

He further cites a study showing the long-term health impacts on communities subjected to large-scale raids, emphasizing the lasting negative effects on social fabric and individual well-being.

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Legal and Operational Challenges

The conversation delves into the legality of involving military and law enforcement agencies in domestic deportation efforts. Blitzer expresses concern that the Trump administration may push the boundaries of existing laws by declaring a state of emergency, thereby granting themselves broader powers to implement their deportation plans.

At [20:36], Remnick asks about the legalities, to which Blitzer responds, "They're going to strain the outer limits of the law on that," suggesting that the administration may exploit emergency declarations to justify unprecedented enforcement measures.

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Impact on Documented Immigrants and DACA Recipients

Blitzer highlights the vulnerability of individuals on humanitarian parole and DACA recipients, warning that Trump's policies will not only target undocumented immigrants but also those who have legal status or entered the country through provisional programs. He notes the lack of legislative paths for regularizing status, leaving these populations at significant risk of deportation once their temporary statuses expire.

Blitzer ([22:38]) emphasizes, "They can cause immense destruction and devastation even trying to reach that goal," indicating that the policy's human toll extends beyond numbers to profound personal and community harm.

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Diminishing Institutional Guardrails

Addressing the absence of institutional checks under Trump's administration, Blitzer reflects on the erosion of internal barriers that previously restrained aggressive immigration enforcement. He cites the Department of Homeland Security's shift towards a more retributive stance, with officials like Chad Wolf capitulating to Miller's directives, thereby enabling more unfettered and harsh enforcement.

At [26:25], Blitzer explains, "This is the most striking issue to my mind, where we've seen what it looks like as the guardrails start to fall away," predicting a surge in operations that disregard previous guidelines against certain types of arrests, leading to increased racial profiling and intrusive raids.

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Consequences for Communities and Legal Jurisdictions

Blitzer warns that aggressive deportation policies will strain relationships between federal authorities and local jurisdictions, particularly in Democratic strongholds. He foresees a combative stance from the federal government towards cities and states that resist cooperation, potentially using threats of withholding emergency aid to enforce compliance.

At [28:44], Remnick asks about the term "unfettered," to which Blitzer responds by providing concrete examples of relaxed policies that previously protected individuals from unfair arrests, highlighting the anticipated regression in enforcement standards.

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Conclusion

Jonathan Blitzer concludes that while the Trump administration's deportation targets may be unrealistic, the pursuit itself will inflict significant suffering and destabilize communities across the United States. The combination of aggressive rhetoric, weakened legal protections, and diminished institutional guardrails sets the stage for a tumultuous and humanitarian crisis in the realm of immigration.

Blitzer ([31:25]) sums up the gravity of the situation: "They can cause immense destruction and devastation even trying to reach that goal. It's almost immaterial whether or not they reach a million."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour offers a comprehensive exploration of Donald Trump's deportation plans, contextualizing them within historical precedents and current political dynamics. Jonathan Blitzer's insights shed light on the potential repercussions of mass deportation policies, emphasizing the profound human and societal costs that outweigh the administration's ambitious targets.

Listeners seeking a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding immigration policy and its implications for American society will find this episode both informative and thought-provoking.

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Notable Quotes

• Jonathan Blitzer ([03:05]): "I definitely think the Democrats and Biden specifically miscalculated in thinking that if they put their heads down and didn't talk about this, the issue would somehow pass or it would kind of dissolve in the general ether."

• Stephen Miller ([10:25]): "We are going to deport up to a million people a year."

• Jonathan Blitzer ([13:11]): "There is no evidence that there's mass criminality."

• Jonathan Blitzer ([18:21]): "That operation, Operation Wetback during the Eisenhower era is the only precedent, really, for just the sheer scale and volume of deportations that the Trump administration wants to carry out."

• Jonathan Blitzer ([26:25]): "This is the most striking issue to my mind, where we've seen what it looks like as the guardrails start to fall away."

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About the Guest

Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker, with extensive experience covering immigration and its socio-political impacts. His book, Everyone who is Gone Is Here, offers a definitive account of the immigration crisis in America, providing critical insights into policy developments and their real-world consequences.

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For more detailed reporting on immigration and other critical issues, visit The New Yorker.

Transcript

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[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Ramnick. Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald Trump's political career for nearly a decade now. His first presidential campaign was largely about building the wall to keep people out. In 2024, the focus has been on sending back immigrants who are already here. He's promised the largest deportation in history, millions of people potentially, and it starts on day one. According to Trump, Stephen Miller said the administration would unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown. A deportation policy on this scale would have enormous impact not only on the lives of immigrants, but on their communities, on the US Economy, and much more. To understand what's really possible come January, I'm joined by staff writer Jonathan Blitzer, who's the author of Everyone who is Gone Is Here, a definitive account published this year of the immigration crisis in America. Jonathan before we get into the prospect of the Trump administration and a potential deportation, I want to ask you if you think, looking back on the now completed campaign, if the Democratic Party got immigration wrong, if the Biden administration ignored it for too long, as has been the critique all along from the Republicans.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

I definitely think the Democrats and Biden specifically miscalculated in thinking that if they put their heads down and didn't talk about this, the issue would somehow pass or it would kind of dissolve in the general ether. And so they didn't really.

[David Remnick]

Why would they do that?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Well, it's tough news for Democrats all the time because the Republicans have a very simple, coherent message. You know, it's plain and it's forceful and it's pithy, and that is, you know, shut down the border, fewer people should enter the country. You know, America first. It's the whole litany. Whereas Democrats have this issue of needing to communicate something more nuanced, balancing a kind of humaneness with pragmatism at the border and beyond. And that's always been a hard message for Democrats. And they've always kind of toggled between trying to seem tough and trying to do things that at least are a little bit different than the Republicans, even though basically the tools in their arsenal aren't all that different. That said, the Biden administration, to my mind, made two sort of major policy miscalculations. The first was clinging to a Trump era policy for too long. It ostensibly was very tough. What it did was it allowed the government to summarily expel anyone who showed up at the southern border without giving them any real sense of due process or an opportunity to present claims for asylum. It seems like it would be an effective way of clearing the border when you need to for the federal government. But in fact, it actually had a series of counterproductive effects because the government was expelling people en masse without any sort of orderly system around it. People were trying to cross multiple times. It didn't really stand up the asylum system or any of the border processing mechanisms that the Trump administration in its first term had sabotaged. And so it allowed the Biden administration to have a kind of illusion of control over the border when in fact the circumstances were really spiraling out of their control. That was the first thing. And the second thing, and the one that I actually think ultimately was more definitive in terms of how it impacted the election, was Governor Abbott, Greg Abbott in Texas, busing tens of thousands of recently arrived migrants to blue cities and states across the country.

[David Remnick]

And DeSantis as well.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

DeSantis did it as well. Each one wanted to outdo the other. DeSantis kind of famously flew migrants to Martha's Vineyard to make the point that, how do you feel when it's in your backyard?

[David Remnick]

But can we Agree then that it was diabolically effective as politics.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Yes. I mean, I'll tell you, my conversations with top officials at the Department of Homeland Security all led to the same assessment, which was, you know, it was Greg Abbott more so than it was Ron DeSantis kind of driving this reality. But that Abbott single handedly changed the way immigration played as a political issue in America as a result of this busing. And to my mind, a profound mistake made by the administration was not intervening and doing something more active of its own. So, you know, what you had was you had all of these buses full of migrants being sent all across the country with the deliberate aim of causing chaos in cities and states far from the border. There was no coordination. The governor of Texas, governor of Florida, were deliberately not giving heads up to local or state officials. And so it was really overwhelming. Cities across the country, if the Biden administration had bit the bullet and tried to take on some of that process.

[David Remnick]

Itself, why didn't they?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

They were scared of the politics.

[David Remnick]

And what are the politics?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

You know, the politics were. I mean, the attacks would write themselves. The attacks would be, look what the Biden administration is doing. It's offering newly arrived immigrants, you know, bus tickets to whatever city they want. And that was the conversation inside the White House that, you know, the bruising political fight around this is going to be just too painful for us. And the operations themselves are complicated. No one's denying that it's complicated to draw up plans to kind of relieve pressure at the border. But the Biden administration essentially, you know, was defensive and allowed someone like Greg Abbott to really run the table on them.

[David Remnick]

Did it seem to you that this was partially responsible for the shift in votes in blue states like New York?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

I mean, I was struck by the fact that in some of the congressional districts in and around the suburbs of New York City, you had large numbers of. In response to polls saying that the border crisis was out of control. It was motivating their decision to vote the way they did. And what was so striking about that for me was for six or seven months, if not longer, before the election itself, the number of people arriving at the border had dropped substantially. And yet the perception in places like New York and beyond was that this was still an ongoing crisis because they were dealing with. Are you saying it was merely a.

[David Remnick]

Perception problem, not a reality problem?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

No, I think it was both. I mean, I think the reality was undeniable that, you know, cities and suburbs that were dealing with, you know, the recent arrival of relatively large numbers of people for whom they were not prepared. I think that was a really acute strain on a number of local resources. I think it would have been manageable had the federal government been more proactive and had the messaging around it been a little bit more forthright. The Democrats tend to think, you know, we lose on this issue because, you know, nuance loses against kind of big, broad, ugly attack lines from Republicans. But the net effect of it all is the public is just bombarded with the Republican line time and again, and there's really no countervailing, narrative, rhetoric, explanation. That unpacks a little bit what's happening now.

[David Remnick]

On January 20, Donald Trump becomes president, and he has promises about day one and deportation. What is the rhetoric and what is going to be the reality?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

You know, I have to say candidly, I don't know what's coming. I mean, we know that there's going to be all every manner of harshness, but the mechanics of mass deportation are complicated. And so it's unclear to me, you know, when people like Stephen Miller, Donald Trump's top immigration advisor and now someone who's going to play a very influential role in the new White House, say, as he has said recently, that the incoming administration is going to deport up to a million people a year. People should be skeptical of that number, the magnitude of that number. There's a huge amount of logistical coordination that would be required for that to work.

[David Remnick]

How many undocumented immigrants are there?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Well, there are upwards of 11 million undocumented people living in the United States, the majority of whom, it should be said, have lived here for more than a decade.

[David Remnick]

Right.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

And so, to my mind, one of the scariest things about what's coming is the randomness of the roundups and arrests. So, you know, one of the things that has guided enforcement policy, certainly among Democrats over the recent years, is in light of the fact that there are so many undocumented immigrants who've been living in the United States who can't regularize their status because Congress is deadlocked. The government has to prioritize who it goes after. For instance, people who have committed crimes, you know, the whole kind of specific list of things. What they're effectively saying is, okay, if you haven't committed crimes, if the only issue you have is that you've overstayed a visa or that, you know, 15 years ago, you crossed the border without authorization, we're gonna deprioritize you for arrest to such a degree that you really do not have to look over your shoulder all the time. The Trump ethos, and it's explicit, and was explicit in the first term, is if you're undocumented, you're fair game. You should be looking over your shoulder.

[David Remnick]

Here's. Here's Stephen Miller describing what he thinks is going to happen on the day of inauguration. He will immediately sign executive orders sealing the border shut, beginning the largest deportation operation in American history, finding the criminal gangs, rapists, drug dealers, and monsters that have murdered our citizens and sending them home.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

No one will be allowed to enter the country illegally. And ICE will be empowered in partnership with FBI, dea, atf, the National Guard, to fully seal and secure the border.

[David Remnick]

With CBP and to find and identify.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

The criminal threats that are inside this.

[David Remnick]

Country and send them back home. Okay, Jonathan, maybe you should break down what Stephen Miller is saying.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Yeah. In the first administration, Trump came into office with Miller and the whole lot of them all planning to ramp up arrests and deportations from the interior of the country. So, in other words, people who have been living here for many years, who are undocumented, whose legal status has lapsed and so on, they were going to be vulnerable. The government was going to go after them. What happened, in effect, was the situation at the border. Large numbers of people showing up because of conditions all across the region, in Central America and beyond, seeking asylum at the southern border. The first Trump administration got, in many ways distracted from its agenda for interior enforcement and instead had to pour a lot of its resources and time into border enforcement. And so some of the harshest, most upsetting things we saw in the first administration had to do with the government's treatment of asylum seekers at the southern border. For example, families getting separated at the border. That was all about trying to punish families who were showing up seeking asylum and basically mistreating them to such a degree. The hope was that other people wouldn't even bother to make the trip. What's happening now is going to be different. In large part, the Democrats now have also ceded a lot of ground on the border itself and on the asylum issue itself. And so, as a result, you really already have a situation in which the border has been kind of locked down to a degree that it hasn't been before by Democrats. So Joe Biden has done a lot of the kind of original Trump bidding on, you know, cracking down on asylum seekers who cross between ports of entry, increasing penalties for people who try to cross illegally, and so on.

[David Remnick]

Are you saying the border is shut?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Well, the border is never shut. That's always been a kind of political fiction. But the numbers of people Arriving at the southern border right now as a result of Biden policies and the policies of the government of Mexico are way down.

[David Remnick]

Now. Stephen Miller mentions criminal gangs, rapists, drug dealers, and monsters that have murdered our citizens and we're going to send them home. What is the level of criminality among undocumented immigrants? Is it, is it any different from the rest of the population?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

You know, this is something that all through the first Trump administration, we were constantly having to insist on. You know, immigrant populations in general commit crimes at much lower rates than US Citizens. There is no evidence that there's mass criminality. There's, you know, there are always going to be one off examples. And that's how these guys operate. That's how Miller operates, both on the campaign and during these administrations. They find individual instances of ugly violence committed by undocumented immigrants, and they blow that up as though it's emblematic of some sort of trend, and it's not. But the kind of knockdown effects of that rhetoric, and obviously the success of it politically, has allowed them to do increasingly harsh things to people who are entirely law abiding. And the public in general sort of throws up its hands and says, all right, well, this is, this is the price we have to pay for getting the House in order. And so the thing that most concerns me in the immediate term, once Trump enters office, there are a lot of people who have arrived relatively recently, within the last couple of years who have availed themselves of actual legal pathways that the Biden administration created for them, but which were always provisional and temporary. And this is one of the problems of immigration policy. You know, presidents basically have to act now unilaterally, because Congress does not legislate on the issue. And so that allows someone like Trump to do very harsh things.

[David Remnick]

Presumably you'll have a cooperative Congress this time around.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

I think so too. And I think there's going to be also be less resistance among Democrats who I think now are very convinced that this issue is a loser for them.

[David Remnick]

I'm speaking with staff writer Jonathan Blitzer and we'll continue in just a moment.

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[David Remnick]

I'm speaking with Jonathan Blitzer, a staff writer at the New Yorker, and he's been covering immigration for the magazine since the first Trump administration. Jonathan Is it legal to involve the military and law enforcement agencies at the local level when you're deporting people? And to add to that, we've heard a lot of comparison of what might come and what happened in the 50s with so called Operation Wetback during the Eisenhower administration. How did they jive?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Well, that operation, Operation Wetback during the Eisenhower era is the only precedent, really, for just the sheer scale and volume of deportations that the Trump administration wants to carry out. At that moment in time, there were over a million people who were deported. And in effect, what that meant was that a lot of US Citizens were deported because they were racially profiled and just rounded up en masse and sent to Mexico. It was an incredibly ugly, dark period. Certainly a blot on the Eisenhower administration's record. And, you know, I think now that's certainly the ambition is to kind of recreate that kind of massive scale of deportations.

[David Remnick]

They've used figures like 20 million people.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Yeah. I mean, those are fictions. That said, even if they fail in trying to carry out that incredibly ambitious agenda, they can cause immense suffering and damage in the meantime, and I think are ready to. So I think, you know, for example, there was a study several years ago about the effects of a big raid in the early 2000s on a meat packing plant in Iowa. It was known as the Postville Raid. It was a giant raid. Huge numbers of people were arrested. Until the first Trump administration. That was the highest number of arrests ever made in a workplace enforcement operation. And there was a study that came out a few years later that looked at birth patterns among Latino children in the area, in the state in the, you know, months and years after that raid. And the study revealed that actually the babies that were born in the ensuing years were smaller when they were born. The mothers had been so impacted by fear and anxiety about what they had witnessed that it had impacted their health, and that that was measurable in the birth weight of the children that followed in the years after that raid. I mean, the consequences of this are bodily. I mean, they're psychological, of course, but they are profound in terms of the social fabric. But they're also. They're born physically. And you mention the fact that the incoming Trump administration is going to need the help of the military, the National Guard and so on. I do think they're going to strain the outer limits of the law on that.

[David Remnick]

What is the law on that?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Well, I think the law, to be frank, we're entering unprecedented territory to some degree. I think what the President elect is going to do when he's in office is he's going to declare a state of emergency, and that is going to, in the eyes of his Lawyers and his legal team give him carte blanche to involve the President of the United.

[David Remnick]

States is going to declare an emergency where immigration is concerned.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

I think that's how it'll look.

[David Remnick]

You've just reported on people who are in the country on what's called humanitarian parole. So that means they're documented. What has Trump said about that program?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Let me first say the Biden administration had a theory of the case at the southern border, and that was it needed to be increasingly harsh in between ports of entry when people just showed up crossing the border, as they're legally allowed to do, seeking asylum. The Biden administration response has looked a lot like the Trump administration's response in its first term, which is to say asylum is mostly off the table for people. At the same time, one of the major approaches they developed, the Biden team, was to use parole, which is a legal authority that presidents have used since the 50s, since, incidentally, the Eisenhower era.

[David Remnick]

Right.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

To basically say, okay, in a situation of international emergency or acute humanitarian crisis, we are letting you enter the country. You can live here, work here legally for two years. We would have to renew that work permit every two years. But once you're here, we can help you regularize your status. The problem over the years has been there hasn't really been legislation to get people on a path to more permanent status. So in the past, what you'd see decades back was there'd be a humanitarian crisis in the world. The US Would parole maybe tens of thousands of people into the country, and then Congress would pass legislation that allowed them to adjust their status. What the Biden administration wasn't allowed to do, wasn't able to do because Congress wasn't acting at all, was it basically was paroling large numbers of people into the country, over a million people. That series of programs allowed the Biden administration to control the situation at the southern border to make sure that people's arrivals there were more orderly.

[David Remnick]

Right.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

But the consequence was something that all of us were witnessing over the last couple of years, and that is these people are going to have their status expire, and then what? And so Trump, from the very beginning on the campaign, now JD Vance has been equally forceful on this. They've all said they're not only going to revoke these parole programs, but they're going to go immediately after the people who availed themselves of these parole programs.

[David Remnick]

Thomas Homan, who's going to be the so called border czar, said, and I'm quoting him here, it's not going to be A mass sweep of neighborhoods. It's not going to be building concentration camps. And he also said they'd focus on targeted arrests. So what does that represent? How much daylight is there between Homan and Stephen Miller in their stances? Homan, as you know, was an architect of family separation policy during Trump's first term, along with Miller.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

A lot of Obama era officials were surprised by how harsh Homan sounded in Trump's first term because Homan had always been a tough law and order guy, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE lifer. But the view certainly in the second, second half of the Obama administration was that Homan is the kind of guy who, you know, may not agree with what our approach is, but is a team player. He can get the rank and file on board because people respect him based on his long career in the agency and so on. And so a lot of Obama era officials called me shocked when Homan started to say some of the really tough sounding things he said at the start of the first Trump administration. And I also think that that's basically what he always felt and he sort of was finally given a chance to be unfettered. And, you know, at the start of the first Trump administration, quite literally, Homan was at his retirement party in January 2017 when he got a call from John Kelly, then Trump's DHS secretary. Later his chief of staff, saying, listen, come back, don't retire. I mean, Homan excused himself from his retirement party at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He's going into the private sector, lucrative job. And he was basically lured back to had ICE because it was the kind of career ambition that he had harbored all these years. When he says that there are going to be targeted operations and that the kind of concentration camps and all of the most nightmarish things that we've heard aren't going to come to pass. I don't think he's saying that because morally he's got a particular problem with those eventualities. I think it's more the fact that he is thinking about operations. He is thinking in terms of nuts and bolt of what arrests can look like.

[David Remnick]

What gives you the idea that he's lacking in any moral fiber?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

You know, I've spoken to him a number of times and I've just never been convinced that there's a deeper sensibility or thoughtfulness about what it is he does. I talk to people who work in Immigration and Customs Enforcement and they run the gamut. Some people actually are more liberal than you would expect. Some are as harsh and tough minded as you'd expect. But many of them share a certain kind of recognition, at least of the human factors at play, and they have different rationalizations for explaining away the fallout of making arrests. Homan never, to me, showed a particularly deep reckoning with what was at stake, either operationally or in terms of actual human beings, and how all of these operations were affecting them.

[David Remnick]

We talk a lot about guardrails, in other words, the idea is that in the first term, there were institutionalists in key positions at the Pentagon and the State Department, and that to the great aggravation of the President of the United States to President Trump, they were guardrails against him going too far. That's one theory of the case. And now the theory of the case is, this time around, that there are no guardrails. What effect will that have on this issue?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

This is the most striking issue to my mind, where we've seen what it looks like as the guardrails start to fall away, because we already have evidence of it from the first administration. I think actually dhs, Department of Homeland Security, was a kind of microcosm of some of what we'll see in different federal departments in the second term. And that is during Trump's first four years. Initially, you had people who would kind of bristle at the idea of lawlessness at the department, who would push back against some of Miller's more outrageous ideas or Trump's particular whims. But over time, essentially what you started to see by the end of Trump's first term was people who at least had a kind of fidelity to the department and its agencies fall away, either forced out, you know, resigned out of frustration. And at the time, there was an acting head of the department, the very end, named Chad Wolf, who basically did whatever Miller wanted. And what that looked like in the context of the Black Lives matter protests in 2020 was to have DHS agents patrolling domestic protest. That's genuinely scary stuff. That's beyond the pale of DHS activity. And you were already starting to see that. So I think you're going to see everything be more unfettered. And I think one of the consequences now of having something like the Department of Justice be run by people who have very little regard for the rule of law is you're going to see a more retributive campaign from the Trump administration that links up with the DHS agenda. So one of the things that happened in the first Trump term was the government wasn't able to deport as many people as it wanted because there was resistance from local and State law enforcement in blue locales, in Democratic strongholds, you know, cities like New York, Chicago, Denver, and so on.

[David Remnick]

Right.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

And you know, what the government wants to do when that happens is the government wants to threaten lawsuits and kind of fight this battle with those jurisdictions to penalize them, to say, okay, you're not going to play ball with immigration enforcement. Fine. When you have a, you know, a storm or a natural disaster, we're not going to send emergency aid to you. And. And for the most part, those kinds of efforts got, you know, slowed down or tied up because of legal fights and so on. I think you're going to have much more concertedness between DHS and DOJ in the second Trump term in prosecuting its agenda and going after jurisdictions that don't play ball.

[David Remnick]

John, you've used the word unfettered. What does that mean in this context, and what will that look like?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Let me give a very concrete example. ICE has a policy. It's not a law. It's essentially a regulation that discourages arrests at schools, hospitals, places of worship, courts, someone showing up for a court date, not appropriate to just sweep in and arrest them because, you know, they're there. That has basically been a kind of rough guideline from, you know, one administration to the next and more or less held. I mean, there were breaches during the first Trump term. You're going to see stuff like that. You're going to see arrest operations in very scary and upsetting places where in the past you've not seen them before. You know, the aim here being to really create a sense of terror. That is going to be the modus operandi of the administration. And so, you know, there's a policy involving what's called collateral arrests. If there's a targeted operation and the government is going after a set list of people who they know who are undocumented. In the past, there have been basically regulations against arresting anyone you encounter along the way. That's going to be out the window. And what that means is there's going to be a much freer reign of racial profiling from agents who don't feel like they have any sense of responsibility. So I think what you're going to see is workplace raids, which, you know, we have been spared because the Biden administration has sort of sworn off of them, as the Obama administration did. At a certain point, you know, you're going to see all of these things come kind of roaring back into the picture. You know, I worry very much about DACA recipients. So, you know, people who came here as children who got a special status during the Obama years and who've moved on and built lives around this status. Trump tried to cancel that policy in his first term and it got tied up in court. That is going to be under assault again. I do think you're going to see an expansion of detention spaces in the United States. The private prison industry is going to do, you know, very well for its shareholders. You know, I think the fact of all this is real. My hesitation in sort of trying to project what it's going to look like is that, you know, we get very obsessed with what the numbers might be. And I think, you know, those numbers are a little bit of a distraction. When Miller talks about deporting a million people, he's pulling that out of thin air. That's not something that he's going to be able to do. But they can cause immense destruction and devastation even trying to reach that goal. And so it's almost immaterial whether or not they reach a million. If they are able to do what they want to do, they're going to cause a lot of suffering and a lot of upheaval.

[David Remnick]

Jonathan Blitzer, thank you.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Thanks for having me.

[David Remnick]

Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer for the New Yorker and you can find his article on humanitarian parole and much more reporting on immigration, all@new yorker.com and before I go, I want to tell you about something you're going to want to put in your queue. My colleagues at on the Media are starting a three part series about the controversies that broke out on college campuses last fall around the protests against the war in Gaza and accusations of antisemitism, all of which led to the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay. The series is called the Harvard Plan, but it's not just a story about one campus. It has implications across the country. That's the new episode of on the Media. Give it a listen and I'll see you next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[WNYC Announcer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Summers.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

And we had additional help this week from Jake Loomis with guidance from Emily.

[WNYC Announcer]

Bottine and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Parish, Victor Guan and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund. WNYC Studios is supported by Mint Mobile. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. For a limited time, get a deal from Mint Mobile when you purchase a three month plan that's with unlimited talk, text and data. To get this new customer offer, go to mintmobile.com wnyc that's mintmobile.com wnyc $45 upfront payment required. Equivalent to $15 per month new customers on first 3 month plan only. Speed slower above 40gb on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.

[David Remnick]

This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship wnyc. Org.