Mass Deportation Is Growing More Likely (but it's not here yet)

Try to hold two thoughts in your mind at once

Before the election, I was begging anyone who would listen to pay more attention to Donald Trump’s threat to carry out a record-breaking, community-destroying mass deportation campaign. (Not many takers before November.) Then, between the election and inauguration, anxiety and news media started rising. I had more interviews with reporters asking about mass deportation than during the entire campaign.

Many of these post-election interviews started with the reporters asking me to react to the assumed fact that mass deportation would begin on January 20. To which I would respond by saying, in some form, that I wasn’t sure I much, but I was completely sure there would be no mass deportation in January.

And as far as I can tell, there wasn’t. And I don’t think there will be in February, either. And yet: If anything, the risk is growing.

I’m not sure how to put a precise number on the risk. But in the language of immigration law I would say it is definitely a well-founded fear. It really could happen. It is growing more likely, but still is uncertain and could be stopped.

One month ago, before Trump took office, I wrote down what we should look for to know if the new administration is really serious about mass deportation. Many of those indicators have happened. They have expanded expedited removal. They’ve made initial moved to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. They’ve reached initial third-country deportation agreements of some form with Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala. They’ve started using military aircraft to carry our deportations. And they’ve apparently started building a large detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

There’s a big outstanding item that they will need for mass deportation: Money. Republicans in Congress are floating as much as $175 Billion in new funding for immigration enforcement. We will have to see what happens in the budget process over the next the next few months.

No one should have ever expected a massive ramp up in deportations so soon. It’s long been known that the Department of Homeland Security did not have the logistical capacity to do that. But they are about as far along as they could have been expected to be by this point. They look serious, but it’s still early.

(If you want to contribute to stopping mass deportation, I would recommend pressing your member of Congress to not vote for any new money for deportations. That is something you can do to help.)

We actually don’t have a ton of hard or clear data about what interior deportations look like at the moment. As you know if you read this Substack, ICE briefly was posting daily arrest data and then stopped. And even arrest data on its own is not enough to discern what’s really going on.

What they want people to believe is that they are arresting and deporting lots of people all over and that they are all dangerous criminals. Meanwhile, as best as I can tell the real deportation campaign right now seems to be both smaller and more indiscriminate than they want people to imagine. There’s been a good deal of reporting that around half of those arrested had no criminal record, and a mounting pile of anecdotal evidence consistent with that. Plus they have occasionally arrested or harassed U.S. citizens who have the chutzpah to walk around with brown skin.

This is why we see so much deportation theater right now. Dr. Phil tagged along with ICE agents! It is why many of us have been trying to persuade friends and allies of immigrants to not spread unconfirmed rumors about ICE checkpoints and raids. They want people to imagine that ICE is hiding in every shadow. Why help them? It spreads panic among people who are already forced to live with extreme anxiety. And it risks a boy-who-cried-wolf problem down the road.

We need to take seriously the looming and growing risk of mass deportation, without getting suckered by Deportation Theater. Use this time to get prepared. Donate to legal defense organizations. Help organize know your rights trainings. By the way, did you call your congressperson about the deportation money yet? Get on it with the same speed a teenager would use to reshare a panic-spreading video.

What is worrying me is that as a mass culture — as a potential resistance movement - we lack a gear between denial and panic. We are battling the human need for drama, and the media need for a today-angle. We need to learn how to discern the theater from the real danger, to hold two thoughts in our mind at once. But I worry that the result will be that people will just fall back into denial. So you’re saying they aren’t doing mass deportation? No, that’s not what I’m saying.

Have you called your congressperson and senator yet?