One senior-level official from former President Donald Trump's administration just made an ominous threat to the immigrant community during a recent gathering of far-right political activists.
On Tuesday, Semafor reporter Dave Weigel reported that during the National Conservatism conference (also known as "NatCon") in Washington, D.C., several of the speakers eagerly expressed how they would help the former president accomplish his goal of pursuing vengeance against his political opponents if elected to a second term. During one panel, Tom Homan – who was director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Trump's Department of Homeland Security – suggested he was already working behind the scenes to make Trump's promise to deport millions of immigrants as draconian as possible.
"Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Homan said. “They ain’t seen s— yet. Wait until 2025.”
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As the New York Times reported last year, one key plank of Trump's second-term policy agenda is the rounding up and detainment of undocumented immigrants on an unprecedented scale. Trump immigration advisor Stephen Miller — an outed white nationalist — previously suggested Trump would deport approximately 10 million immigrants during a second term. Earlier this year, Ronald Brownstein — a senior editor for the Atlantic — tweeted excerpts from a speech Miller gave to National Rifle Association activists about how Trump would create “standing facilities” to detain immigrants by the thousands “where planes are moving off the runway constantly.”
Deporting millions of immigrants in a short number of years would likely be a major blow to the economy and result in significant price hikes for Americans. New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan reported last month that it's likely "production falls and labor costs go up" in the event of mass deportations.
"For example, if farmers could not find enough workers to pick all their crops, there would be a smaller supply of produce and it would get more expensive," they wrote. "And businesses would be forced to offer higher wages to attract or retain workers — passing on some of their higher costs to consumers."
According to Weigel, the NatCon audience that met at the Capital Hilton in D.C. consisted of "Trump administration veterans mingled with conservative writers and think tankers who had conquered the old 'Bush-Romney' Republican Party." Attendees reportedly viewed Trump as "a conquering hero who’d have a confident, well-trained movement behind him next year," and NatCon speakers often echoed Trump's promises to use the force of the federal government to punish Trump's enemies.
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In a segment featuring former Trump attorney John Eastman (author of the so-called "Eastman Memo" that outlined the plot to disrupt Congress' certification of the 2020 Electoral College count), the now-disbarred lawyer proposed punishing federal judges who ruled against Trump in his unsuccessful election litigation.
"We’ve got to start impeaching these judges for acting in such an unbelievably partisan way from the bench," Eastman said, just a week after the six conservatives on the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are free to break the law as long as it's deemed an official act.
John Yoo, who was a top DOJ official in former George W. Bush's administration, also encouraged political reprisal under a second Trump administration. He specifically called on Republican prosecutors to be Trump's political foot soldiers should he win in November.
"People who have used this tool against people like John [Eastman] or President Trump have to be prosecuted by Republican or conservative DAs in exactly the same way, for exactly the same kinds of things, until they stop," Yoo said.
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Click here to read Weigel's full report in Semafor.
