President-elect Donald Trump verified Monday that he intends to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to deport millions of people when he takes office in January.
Tom Fitton, who leads the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, wrote on Trump’s Truth Social platform earlier this month that the Republican politician is “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”
Trump quoted his post with an emphatic corroboration: “TRUE!!”
Trump pledged throughout the campaign that he would swiftly move to detain and deport millions of undocumented migrants.
Unlike his first run for office in 2016, when his hardline immigration campaigning focused on building a border wall, this year he preached aggressive legal crackdowns that would involve a broad swath of agencies and, potentially, America’s military.
Sources familiar with the plans told CNN over the weekend that Trump’s aides are already plotting how to expand detention facilities, including in metropolitan areas.
Politico reported Monday that Trump’s team is also devising ways to create executive orders that will withstand legal challenges from human rights groups, noting he can also count on a friendlier judiciary than he faced during his first time in office, in particular thanks to the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court.
There were roughly 11.7 million undocumented people in the United States as of last year, the most since 2010, according to the Center for Migration Studies.
Trump told Time earlier this year he would deport 15 to 20 million.
His running mate, vice president-elect JD Vance, blithely compared the ticket’s plans—which would tear apart families, disrupt local economies and put pressure on the labor market supply—to eating a Big Mac.
“You say, you can’t possibly eat that whole thing. It’s bigger than your mouth,” Vance said, during a podcast appearance last month. “Well, the way you do it is you take one bite, then a second bite, and then a third bite. And that’s how I think about deportations here.”
Trump has promised to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a 226-year-old law that was used to detain “enemy aliens” during times of war—since the U.S. is not currently at war, legal challenges would likely target the law’s applicability.
Trump also plans to end fast-tracked humanitarian visa paroles for undocumented people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
To mete out his policies, Trump has begun assembling a team of hard-liners who share his stark view of immigration. Tom Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will be appointed “border czar.”
He has also nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary—while not from a border state, the MAGA loyalist has long echoed Trump’s anti-immigration views.
Trump also plans to welcome back to his side immigration hardliner Stephen Miller. An advisor during Trump’s first term in office, he will serve as homeland security advisor and deputy chief of staff for policy.
Miller was a leading architect of policies including the Trump travel ban that targeted people from Muslim-majority countries, as well as the president-elect’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents.
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