President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to execute mass deportations of immigrants in the U.S. illegally will involve the military and a national emergency declaration, he confirmed on Monday, November 18th.
In a Nov. 8 post on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, Tom Fitton, who leads the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, wrote: “GOOD NEWS: Reports are the incoming @RealDonaldTrump administration prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”
Asked for more details of the plan, Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that “President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history.”
Advocates for immigrants, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have said they are prepared to respond with legal action.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the left-leaning American Immigration Council, cautioned that there is no national emergency authority permitting the U.S. to carry out deportations.
During his first term, Trump bypassed Congress to divert Pentagon funds to expand the border wall by declaring a national emergency. President Biden terminated the emergency order just after he took office in 2021.
Reichlin-Melnick said he doesn’t take Trump’s response to Fitton’s post as confirmation that U.S. military troops will be deployed to carry out deportations. Troops have previously been used to provide logistical support at the border, but they haven’t been directly involved in rounding up migrants.
“This is my recollection of the last four years of the Trump administration — they say a lot of things and when the actual policy rolls out, it often looks quite different,” he said.
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