‘We haven’t seen anything yet’: Trump’s mass deportations will only grow from here

When Donald Trump won a second term as president of the United States a year ago, members of violent militias And far-right groups who had spent years reinforcing the lie that the 2020 election was rigged were ready to help the president keep one of his main campaign promises: mass deportations.

“I am ready to help”, Richard Mack, former sheriff and founder of the far-right party Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Associationtold WIRED at the time, saying he was in contact with Tom Homan, the man Trump named his “border czar.” Tim Foley, director of Arizona Border Recon, which describes itself as a “non-governmental organization,” also said to WIRED he was in contact with administration officials. William Teer, then leader of the far-right Texas Three Percenters militia, wrote a letter to Trump offering his help. Homan even met with a Proud Boys affiliate after the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center. revealed. According to reports of the meeting, they discussed expulsions.

Even though all these militia leaders and far-right groups were salivating at the idea of ​​being deployed on the streets of American cities to arrest immigrants at gunpoint, the call never came.

Instead, the Trump administration has overhauled the federal government so completely that it no longer needs far-right groups from outside the government to prop it up. traumatize and terrorize immigrant communities across the country. Instead, it relies on a significantly increased federal force, encompassing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), FBI and DEA agents, state and local law enforcement officers, among others. This newly expanded force is emboldened not only by a massive influx of money, but also by the White House’s tacit approval to do whatever it deems necessary to meet Trump’s wild demands. expulsion targets.

“What we’re seeing now is that the Trump administration is effectively realigning the federal government to support mass deportations,” says Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “This has meant diverting law enforcement resources from several agencies that had never previously been involved in low-intensity immigrant arrests, so that they are now focused solely on profiling and arresting immigrants. »

As devastating as the last 12 months have been for immigrant communities in the United States, experts say the worst is yet to come. Install CBP, which has a documented history of alleged human rights violations, as the agency at the forefront of the immigration crackdown is a deeply worrying signthey say.

“I think we’re just at the beginning,” says Naureen Shah, director of government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union. “I think we haven’t seen anything yet. They’re going to intensify considerably in the coming years. [months].”