Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration would declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

In an early morning social media post, Trump responded “TRUE!!!” to a post by Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who wrote on 8 November that the next administration “will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program”.

Since his decisive victory, Trump has said he intends to make good on his campaign promise to execute mass deportations, beginning on the first day of his presidency. But many aspects of what he has described as the “largest deportation program in American history” remain unclear.

Trump has previously suggested he would rely on wartime powers, military troops and sympathetic state and local leaders. Such a sprawling campaign – and the use of military personnel to carry it out – is almost certain to draw legal challenges and pushback from Democratic leaders, some of whom have already said they would refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.

  • peopleproblems
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    110 minutes ago

    I don’t think this will work the way he expects. While he has the ‘legal’ authority to take command of a State’s National Guard, there is absolutely no way a single one of the governors would allow this. The red states may allow the military into their bluer cities, but the Democrat governors have largely already said they’ll refuse it.

    The largest issue is that the “Mass Deportations” don’t forcibly remove people from the country. They have to process where they all get sent. Guess where they concentrate the immigrants? Guess what happens when those facilities get too full to use them as a cheap source of labor or keep them fed?

    • paraphrand
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      12 hours ago

      Why is Marty an aware Nazi? Who are they?

      • @[email protected]
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        1 hour ago

        The joke is time travel i guess; everything the Nazi’s pioneered is being not-so-slowly parroted by Trump and crew like its new again, when its really not…

  • toiletobserver
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    676 hours ago

    Deport everyone who arrived after 1350AD and their descendents. Make America native again

    • @Snowclone
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      114 hours ago

      The sad part is, first nations folks don’t even want to do this, they serve in the armed forces at very high rates, I don’t mean it’s sad they are very much American, I mean it’s sad that they have more respect on average for other Americans than people have respect for them.

      • ThePowerOfGeek
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        73 hours ago

        Yup. Remember that right wing asshole candidate who yelled at a native American lady to ‘go back there she came from’? You can bet he will be gleeful about these plans.

        These people are totally lacking in any self-awareness or sense of history.

    • @SarcasticMan
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      24 hours ago

      Yeah, kick them all out! My 23andme says I am 3% native American so I can say that.

  • @CharlesDarwin
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    145 hours ago

    Also, how will this reverse prices back to the “good old days” of donvict’s first tenure?

    I mean, I’m using my entire paycheck up on a dozen eggs, or so “JD” “Vance” told me.

    • @Snowclone
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      4 hours ago

      It will destroy the economy, entire sectors of commerce will end, and Trump was trying to shut down all trade from the southern boarder entirely his whole last term, no matter how many times his staff told him billions of dollars in trade cross the boarder every single day. If he dosen’t have people in place willing to tell him no. Which he’s getting really good at placing yes men everywhere, then he’ll probably do that as well, and might do it with flights and trains from the south of the US as well. If that happens and he’s dumping billions into depopulating the US by 22mil the US is going see the worst economic disaster in our history by several magnitudes. Maybe enough protesters get organized and strategically block road for long enough to actually slow them down, but with the US military I don’t see that happening.

  • @PunnyName
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    125 hours ago

    But will the military comply?

    • @[email protected]
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      225 hours ago

      We don’t have a lot of reason to think that the military wouldn’t comply. We have a handful of examples of troops refusing orders from very close in the command hierarchy to commit overt inarguable war crimes. We have more examples to the contrary.

      If they get the order from someone just up the chain to torch a subdivision and napalm the children, it’s a coin toss. If it’s the presidents policy, and they’re just relocating people? Bit risky not to comply.

      Is this uncharitable to the troops that a lot of people have high ideals will behave morally as regards legal and illegal orders? Most definitely. But also, they napalm civilian targets, torch villages and have literally rounded up Americans and our them in camps before, without due process. It’s not even a novel situation.

      • @Sterile_Technique
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        84 hours ago

        There’s quite a bit of training nowadays on how to identify and abso-fucking-lutely DO NOT follow unlawful orders, so I’d have a fair deal more faith in avoiding the napalm situation than a coin-toss… but there’s also a lot of training on if it’s a legal order you fucking FOLLOW it even if it’s really uncomfortable. …and relocating people who already don’t have a legal status doesn’t stand out as a unlawful order, so unfortunately I’d guess compliance will be around 100% on this one.

        • @[email protected]
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          72 hours ago

          The key there is unlawful. Not immoral.

          They hold all the keys. Both houses, the courts, the executive branch. They will simply make whatever the fuck they want legal.

    • @Snowclone
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      54 hours ago

      On this? I would assume so. I don’t think there’s a constitutional conflict unfortunately ethnic clensing is very much legal in the US framework, unless Biden spent significant amounts of time hiding legal prohibitions on ethnic clensing all over the place, it’s still very legal. It’s still legal for the US to forcibly sterilize anyone they can claim a biological flaw against. It’s still legal to put people in concentration camps based on race, ethnicity, and national origin going back two generations. No one even cares that the last time Trump was in office ICE was forcing hysterectomies on asylum seekers of all ages with no medical justification.

  • @Retreaux
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    186 hours ago

    The It Could Happen Here podcast pointed out that the sheer amount of financial maneuvering to pull this off would not be an insignificant amount, from detention centers to staffing, etc. Not that it’s an impossible task but it’s a lot bigger to pull off than bOtH SiDeS tend to think.

    • ThePowerOfGeek
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      23 hours ago

      I’m not sure how much of a financial burden the staffing side will actually be. Trump’s campaign has been going around the heartland for 2-3 years, gathering up the names of eager supporters who want to help him in any way possible.

      I’m pretty sure if those volunteers are told they will a) be helping Dear Leader, b) be given unchecked powers to torment and intimidate Latinos/Latinas, they will leap at the opportunity. And they will probably happily pay for any accommodation and food out if their own pocket.

  • Noxy
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    156 hours ago

    how bout you deport your own ass to the polluted swamp that first congealed you

  • GladiusB
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    106 hours ago

    How? I just don’t see this as a feasible course of action.

    • @athairmor
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      175 hours ago

      Isn’t it illegal to use the military internally? The National Guard, maybe. But, they answer to the state government.

      He’ll have pushback if not outright mutiny from the military if he tries to use them against civilians, citizens or not.

      • @Mirshe
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        195 hours ago

        Ahh, but this is why he’s already forming a board to throw out any officers that are brash enough to get in his way, bypassing official channels. The endgame, as I see it, is a complete reorganization of the command structure, ending with something that looks like Russia, where specific orders come directly from the top of the government all the way down the chain, to squad-level sometimes. This gets rid of the extremely effective tactical flexibility that made the US so effective in WWII, but it also makes it so you can just axe any part of that totem pole that’s stupid enough to get in your way without much problem.

        • @[email protected]
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          15 hours ago

          I don’t know much about military structure, but this sure does sound like something straight out of Putin’s book to make the US weaker, weak enough to attack.

          Not that it would have any chance, but Putin’s a moron anyway so.

          • @Snowclone
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            24 hours ago

            Fascism is an excellent way to weaken a country. Strong centralized government is very important, but it needs to be an effective government, not one stupid asshole. When its 1000s of technocrats it works very well.

          • @CharlesDarwin
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            25 hours ago

            If we are in the middle of an active shooting civil war as a consequence of this, it sure would have a chance. Also, the qons seem to be in their pockets anyway.

      • @minnow
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        65 hours ago

        Why do you think his first order of business is to court martial anybody who he thinks won’t do his bidding?

    • @Bieren
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      75 hours ago

      Simple. Door to door searches. Just like some European country in the 1930s. This will go over great until people start knocking on the doors of his worshippers.

      That, or like almost everything else he says, there is no detailed thought applied.

  • @CharlesDarwin
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    35 hours ago

    Since his decisive victory,

    Decisive is now < 2% difference, I guess?

    • @[email protected]OP
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      4 hours ago

      Decisive is winning popular vote, winning all swing states and having control of white house, congress and supreme court.