(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The New York Times details Trump's plan to impose mass deportations and prison camps for immigrants [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-11 If Americans choose to re-elect Donald Trump next year, they will be inheriting a police state, the likes of which has never existed in this country and one probably unimaginable to anyone who has ever lived here. It will be a place quite literally redolent of Germany in the 1930’s in which millions of people considered as “undesirable” are routinely rounded up and placed in camps for deportation by a government weaponized to serve a racist dictatorship. As hard as it may be for Americans to process, this is not some hyperbolic, dystopian fantasy. It is an existing, actual plan that has been carefully and meticulously crafted by Trump with the help of his white supremacist former aide, Stephen Miller, and its implementation will begin immediately, on day one of Trump’s 2025 inauguration. The social and economic upheaval that ensues will be staggering and unprecedented, as the country that we are currently living in will have effectively ceased to exist. As reported by Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, writing for the New York Times: Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled. According to the report, Trump’s plan not only envisions the mass internment of undocumented immigrants but also proposes (again) barring the entry of Muslims from select nations, deporting foreign students here on visas if they express anti-Israel sentiments, and ending temporary status granted to immigrants for humanitarian reasons. The Times authors report that it will be implemented with the assistance of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and state National Guard troops. It contemplates enlisting the help of local police volunteered by Republican-dominated states such as Texas and Florida. As the Times’ authors note: In a second Trump presidency, the visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian protests would be canceled. U.S. consular officials abroad will be directed to expand ideological screening of visa applicants to block people the Trump administration considers to have undesirable attitudes. People who were granted temporary protected status because they are from certain countries deemed unsafe, allowing them to lawfully live and work in the United States, would have that status revoked. At the direction of Trump himself, the Times authors interviewed several persons who will be leading and directing this effort, assuming Trump is re-elected. The most prominent of them is Stephen Miller who was responsible for nearly all of Trump’s immigration priorities during his first term in office, including the prior “Muslim ban” and the Trump policy of child kidnapping, euphemistically described as “family separation.” One of Miller’s chief priorities will be to end “birthright” citizenship currently authorized by the U.S. Constitution. As the Times’ authors report, Trump and his aides readily acknowledge the legal and constitutional obstacles to their plans but intend to proceed regardless, believing that the legal environment has shifted in their favor thanks to Trump’s seeding of the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority and his conservative judicial appointments. Their intent, according to the Times article, is to create a “blitz” of measures against undocumented and legal immigrants that will overwhelm the legal system and effectively steamroll anticipated challenges and objections by immigration attorneys. As the Times article notes: While a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act generally forbids the use of the armed forces for law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Mr. Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act at the border, enabling the use of federal troops to apprehend migrants, Mr. Miller said. Camps to house millions of immigrants prior to their deportation will be constructed, according to Miller, “on open land in Texas near the border.” Funding for such camps and deportation measures will be diverted from existing military appropriations. The Times article makes no mention of penalizing those businesses that typically employ undocumented immigrants, such as agriculture, hospitality or construction industries. Miller, however, blithely discounts the economic calamity certain to ensue from these draconian measures. As the Times reports: “Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs,” he said. “Americans will also celebrate the fact that our nation’s laws are now being applied equally, and that one select group is no longer magically exempt.” The Times authors do not provide any data reflecting how Americans might actually be expected to react to this planned transformation of the nation, nor do they acknowledge the strong likelihood that such radical policies could swiftly be refashioned to target American citizens. Perhaps they were too flabbergasted to make that connection. Trump and his minions, however, who exist primarily within a belief system propagated within the right-wing universe, clearly believe public opinion will support these measures, and they promise to figure strongly in his 2024 re-election campaign. What remains to be seen is whether American voters will be sufficiently horrified or repelled by these plans enough to deny Trump the opportunity to impose them. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/11/2205136/-The-New-York-Times-details-Trump-s-plan-to-impose-mass-deportations-and-prison-camps-for-immigrants?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/