Illegal Immigration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      To Beat Trump, Nikki Haley Is Trying to Speak to All Sides of a Fractured G.O.P.

      by

      Her campaign will test what political strategists and observers of her rise in politics have said is among her greatest political skills: an ability to massage her message to the moment.To beat former President Donald J. Trump in the coming months, Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, must stitch together a coalition of Republicans: Mr. Trump’s most faithful supporters, voters who like his policies but who have grown weary of him personally, and the smaller but still vocal contingent who abhor him entirely.It’s a challenge that will test what political strategists and those who have observed Ms. Haley’s ascent from her first underdog win in South Carolina have said is among her greatest skills as a candidate: an ability to calibrate her message to the moment.Since announcing her bid in February, she has campaigned much like an old guard Republican: hawkish on foreign policy, supportive of legal immigration reform and staunchly in favor of the international alliances that Mr. Trump questioned during his administration. She has also sounded a lot like the former president, whose “America First” rhetoric she echoed while serving as one of his diplomats, with aggressive calls to send the U.S. military into Mexico and remarks about the need to rid schools and the military of perceived left-wing influences on hot-button cultural issues like race and transgender rights.Other than how she has navigated Mr. Trump himself, perhaps no issue best exemplifies Ms. Haley’s approach than abortion. She backed harsh restrictions on the procedure as governor of South Carolina and has called herself “unapologetically pro-life” on the trail, but she has struck a flexible tone as her party has flailed in countering the electoral backlash the conservative majority on the Supreme Court triggered when it overturned Roe v. Wade. Her appeals for “consensus” have been among the most common reasons cited for her upward climb in the polls in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and a former aide to Mitt Romney who has known Ms. Haley since she was a state lawmaker first running for governor, said she “has always been a pragmatic conservative.” “She is comfortable in her own skin, and she is going to win or lose based on her own values and beliefs,” he said. Still, the difficulty for her, as for all the candidates attempting to emerge as a Trump alternative, is that “what a conservative is has been redefined by Trump himself,” he said.Mr. Trump’s lead over the field is dominant nationally and in every early state polled, and it remains uncertain that Ms. Haley could peel away enough of his faithful, no matter her approach, to come out on top. And what has so far propelled her could also become a liability, should she alienate one or more faction. Her rivals, including Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, have sought to portray her as insufficiently conservative and as someone who panders to Democrats. Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, labeled her a “snake oil salesman” who “will say whatever she needs to say to get power.”Her campaign officials and surrogates argue her politics have stayed the same, with the country and the world changing around her. “Nikki has always been a tough, anti-establishment conservative,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley.Ms. Haley’s attempt to thread the needle on abortion is already being tested, as she has faced skepticism from Iowa’s evangelical community, a critical voting bloc. Addressing a conservative Christian audience in Iowa, Ms. Haley said she would have signed a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy as governor.Democrats seized on Ms. Haley’s remarks as proof that, despite her tone, she is no moderate on the issue. The influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who previously indicated that clear-cut abortion opposition would be the driving factor for his support, went on to endorse Mr. DeSantis. But just days earlier, Ms. Haley had received a seemingly impromptu endorsement from Marlys Popma, the former head of the state Republican Party and one of Iowa’s most prominent anti-abortion activists — who indicated she was comfortable with Ms. Haley’s stance.Here are four other issues on which Ms. Haley has shifted, evolved or otherwise tempered her positions.Immigration and refugeesMs. Haley first rose in politics on the deep red wave of the Tea Party — and its anti-immigrant sentiment. As governor, she signed some of the harshest immigration laws in the country in 2011, requiring law enforcement officers to ask certain people’s immigration status and businesses to verify that their workers were in the country legally.But Ms. Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, largely refrained from using dehumanizing language against immigrants and stuck to the consistent message that immigration was critical to the nation, as long as it was done legally. Still, two pivotal events prompted her to take a sharp turn on the issue: the deadly terror attack in Paris in 2015, and the rise of Mr. Trump.After the attack, Ms. Haley, who was then governor, went from supporting the efforts of faith groups to resettle refugees in South Carolina to aggressively fighting the Obama administration on the admission of Syrians fleeing violence, citing concerns over the vetting process.Before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, she called his proposal to bar Muslims from traveling to the United States “absolutely un-American.” As Mr. Trump’s U.N. ambassador, she defended his order to temporarily block all refugees and people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U. S., as well as his decision to cut American funding to Palestinian refugees.On the trail, she has expressed support for expediting legal immigration avenues, for aiding escape from persecution and for improving the ways people can migrate, calling for a system based on merit and business needs, rather than quotas. But with a higher and more consistent frequency, she echoes Mr. Trump. She has promised to build a wall, send immigrants back and reinstitute some of Mr. Trump’s harshest immigration and asylum policies.Tough talk on ChinaMs. Haley seizes every opportunity to flex her foreign policy credentials and has stood out among her rivals for her steadfast support of Israel and Ukraine.A trickier spot has been her hawkish stance on China. Ms. Haley’s stump speeches are laden with warnings that China is outpacing the United States in shipbuilding, hacking American infrastructure and developing “neuro-strike weapons,” which she says can be used to “disrupt brain activity” of military commanders and civilians.But as governor of South Carolina, she lauded and welcomed Chinese companies that wanted to contribute to the state’s economy, helping those entities expand or open new operations. Those moves have opened her to attacks from Mr. DeSantis and other opponents, and she and Mr. DeSantis have lobbed false or misleading claims involving China at each other in recent weeks as the race for second place has tightened.Explaining her position on the campaign trail, Ms. Haley has argued that her administration’s investments in Chinese companies accounted for a fraction of the jobs and projects spurred during her tenure, and that she had not been aware of the dangers China posed until she became U.N. ambassador. The threat of China has also evolved, she adds.“There is not another governor in this race that hasn’t worked to recruit Chinese companies,” she said last month at a chapel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Every governor has done the same thing, just like every one of you has Chinese products in your home.”Identity politicsFew moments have defined Ms. Haley more in the public view than when she signed legislation to take down the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina State House, after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black parishioners in Charleston in 2015, including a state senator. On the trail, she powerfully recalls the experience, casting herself as a new generational leader capable of bridging divides.But the feat also captures her calibration: As she ran for election in 2010 and then re-election in 2014, she rejected talk of removing the flag, a thorny issue in a state where Confederate heritage groups were a major political force. After the 2015 attack rattled South Carolina, Ms. Haley seized on the newfound political will among state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.Ms. Haley has also wielded her own identity to significant effect. Much as she invokes her high heels to point out that she is the only woman in the race, she has used her family background to call for staunch immigration measures and her election as the first woman of color to lead South Carolina to argue that America is neither “rotten” nor “racist.”Fighting the conservative cultural battles that have animated the G.O.P. base in recent years has not been central to her presidential campaign, but Ms. Haley has echoed Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump in some of her language criticizing gender and racial diversity initiatives in boardrooms and classrooms. Her stump speech incorporates nods to the growing wave of anti-trans legislation, and her call to end “gender pronoun classes in the military” remains one of her most reliable applause lines on the trail. At her education policy rollout in September, she joined a conservative political group known for promoting book bans, another cause adopted by many on the far right.But as new polling has shown that the battle against “wokeness” has lost some of its political potency, her more recent remarks about education have tended to focus on support for school choice programs, which allow public money to be directed to private and religious schools, and tackling children’s low test scores in core subjects like reading and math.Donald J. TrumpIn the 2024 race, perhaps Ms. Haley’s most careful approach has been toward Mr. Trump, whose support among Republicans remains significant.Not long after the assault on the U.S. Capitol, Ms. Haley said Mr. Trump had “lost any sort of political viability.” But she later went on to say that the party needed the former president and suggested that she would not jump into the 2024 presidential race if Mr. Trump decided to run. She then became the first to challenge him for the nomination — a move the Trump campaign highlighted in an email to supporters as one of her “flip flops” in the 2024 race.In a January interview with the Fox News host Bret Baier, Ms. Haley explained her change of heart, saying conditions at the border, inflation and crime, and the country’s approach to foreign policy had worsened since she initially indicated she would stay out of the running. “I think we need a young generation to come in to step up and really start fixing things,” she said.On the trail, she has alternated between criticism and praise of Mr. Trump. On the one hand, she has lauded him for his border policies. At the first presidential debates in August, she was among six candidates who raised their hands to indicate they would support the former president as their party’s nominee, even if he were convicted of a felony. But she also has called Mr. Trump “thin-skinned and easily distracted” — among her sharpest critiques — and more recently has been describing him as a force of “drama and chaos” that the country cannot afford. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Rishi Sunak’s Dilemma: When to Hold an Election He Looks Poised to Lose

      by

      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is 20 percentage points behind in opinion polls. But history suggests the timing of a vote might make a difference.No question in British politics will be more regularly asked, and reliably brushed aside, over the next few months than when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to call the country’s next general election.He must do so by January 2025. The conventional wisdom is that with his Conservative Party trailing the opposition Labour Party by 20 percentage points in the polls, Mr. Sunak will wait as long as he can. Given the fact that Britons do not like electioneering around Christmas or in the dead of winter, that would suggest a vote next fall.But some of Mr. Sunak’s colleagues last week pushed for an earlier timetable. Having lost a critical legal ruling on his flagship immigration policy, the prime minister came under pressure from the right of his party to go to the polls in the spring if the House of Lords blocks the government’s efforts to revamp legislation to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.Turning the election into a referendum on immigration might deflect attention from the economic woes plaguing Britain. But that assumes voters could be persuaded to swing to the Conservatives out of a fear of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats, rather than blaming the party for a stagnant economy, a cost-of-living crisis and hollowed out public services.Britain’s Supreme Court last week struck down the policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda as unlawful. But Mr. Sunak has vowed to keep the matter alive by negotiating a new treaty with the East African country that would include a legally binding commitment not to remove migrants sent there by Britain — one of the court’s objections.Mr. Sunak also pledged emergency legislation that would declare Rwanda a safe country for asylum seekers. It remains unclear whether that would survive legal challenges and in the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of Parliament that has the right to review the legislation and could block it (though its appetite for a full-scale clash with the government was not clear.)“I know the British people will want this new law to pass so we can get flights off to Rwanda,” Mr. Sunak told reporters last week. “Whether it’s the House of Lords or the Labour Party standing in our way, I will take them on because I want to get this thing done and I want to stop the boats.”Asylum seekers disembark from a lifeboat in Dungeness, England, after being picked up at sea while crossing the English Channel.Henry Nicholls/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPolitical analysts say immigration remains a resonant issue in England’s north and Midlands, where support for the Conservatives in 2019 gave the party a landslide general election victory. Those voters, many of whom traditionally supported the Labour Party, were drawn to the Tory slogan, “Get Brexit done.”“Immigration is now the top priority for 2019 Conservative Party voters, above even the cost-of-living crisis and the dire state of the country’s National Health Service,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent, who has written about populism and identity politics.“This means, in short, that Rishi Sunak has no way of winning the next election unless he connects with these voters by reducing immigration and regaining control of the country’s borders,” he said. “Yet both of those things currently look unlikely.”Far from accelerating the date of an election, Professor Goodwin argued that the salience of immigration would pressure Mr. Sunak to delay a vote. It will take months to surmount the legal problems with the existing policy, the professor said, let alone begin one-way flights to Rwanda.Other experts are more skeptical that an immigration-dominated election would play to the advantage of the Tories. Most voters view the party negatively on immigration, said Sophie Stowers, a researcher at the U.K. in a Changing Europe, a think tank in London. The number of people crossing the channel has remained stubbornly high since Mr. Sunak became prime minister, while legal migration has soared.“To me, it seems counterintuitive to bring attention to an issue where you have a poor image with the public,” Ms. Stowers said.The question is whether the Conservatives would do even worse if the election were decided on the economy, which matters more than migration to voters at large, according to opinion polls. Mr. Sunak did achieve one of his key economic goals last week, halving the rate of inflation. But he has yet to achieve the other two: reviving growth and reducing public debt.Clothing for sale in London last month. Mr. Sunak did achieve one of his key economic goals last week, halving the rate of inflation.Hannah Mckay/ReutersIt’s not yet clear that the economic news will improve between the spring and fall, analysts said. While inflation has cooled, the lingering effect of higher interest rates — propelled upward by Liz Truss’s market-shaking tax policies last year — is still cascading through the economy in the form of higher home mortgage rates.Historically, many successful prime ministers, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, called elections earlier than they needed, rather than risk becoming the victim of unforeseen events. They usually opted for the summer months, when the weather — and the public mood — is typically better, although Boris Johnson successfully broke that pattern with his victory in December 2019.Mr. Sunak’s room for maneuver is limited. One option would be holding the vote in May 2024 to coincide with local elections, or in June. Another possibility would be October or November, which would coincide with elections in the United States. But the possibility of a victory by Donald J. Trump could have an unpredictable effect, potentially pushing some British voters to a more centrist option. As a last resort, Mr. Sunak could hold off until Jan. 28, 2025.Some of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors paid a high price for miscalculating the timing of elections. Despite speculation that he would call an election in 1978, the Labour Party prime minister James Callaghan delayed voting until the following year. Labor unrest escalated into what became known as the “winter of discontent,” sweeping Mrs. Thatcher to victory in 1979.Margaret Thatcher, campaigning in 1979, won election as prime minister after the Labour Party incumbent, James Callaghan, decided not to call an election the previous year.Press Association, via Associated PressGordon Brown, another Labour prime minister, had been expected to capitalize on his early popularity by calling an election soon after taking over from Tony Blair in 2007. Instead, he delayed, ultimately losing power in 2010.Theresa May made the opposite decision, calling an early election in 2017 in which she lost her majority, though probably more because of her unpopular agenda and poor campaign skills than bad timing.“Once the election is underway, everything is on the table,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “You lose control of the agenda.”Trying to build an election campaign around the issue of small boats bringing migrants is likely to fail, Mr. Kellner added, suggesting Mr. Sunak will only call an early vote if he calculates he has a realistic prospect of keeping his job.“If, at the point when you have to make a decision, you have no chance of winning, then you might as well wait,” he said, “because maybe there is a five percent chance of winning in six months, and a five percent chance is better than no chance.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Donald Trump Endorsed by Greg Abbott at Texas Border Event

      by

      Gov. Greg Abbott threw his support behind the former president in the Republican presidential primary at an event near the southern border.Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas endorsed former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday in an appearance near the southern border, echoing Mr. Trump’s talk about an existential crisis of illegal immigration.“I’m here to tell you that there is no way, no way that America can continue under the leadership of Joe Biden as our president,” Mr. Abbott said in Edinburg, Texas, after he and Mr. Trump greeted Border Patrol agents. “We need a president who’s going to secure the border. We need a president who’s going to restore law and order in the United States of America.”Mr. Abbott, a three-term governor with a strongly conservative record, castigated President Biden for reversing Trump-era policies that had expedited deportations and required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting hearings, and claimed that Mr. Biden was facilitating terrorism.Mr. Abbott has taken extraordinary measures on border crossings during the Biden administration — including putting razor wire along the border and buoys in the Rio Grande — that have injured many migrants. Under his administration, Texas has also bused tens of thousands of newly arrived migrants around the country, frequently to big cities run by Democrats.His aggressive policies align him closely with Mr. Trump, whose plans if elected to a second term include detaining undocumented immigrants in camps, relying on a form of expulsion that doesn’t involve due process hearings, and deputizing local police officers and National Guard troops from Republican-led states to carry out immigration raids.Mr. Trump took to the microphone after the endorsement and gave an unusually short speech: just 10 minutes long, compared with his 75-minute address in Iowa on Saturday and nearly two hours in New Hampshire last weekend. Mr. Trump’s appearance at the border did not bear resemblance to his typical campaign events this year, and it was not widely open to supporters.“We’re going to make the governor’s job very easy,” he said, suggesting that his immigration policies would remove the need for Mr. Abbott to handle the issue and claiming falsely that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had never visited the border.“Our country is going to hell,” he added, before returning to familiar territory of demonizing his political opponents: “We have some people that either they don’t care, they’re not very smart or they hate our country, and nobody really knows the answer.”Both this weekend and last, he had railed at length against President Biden and vowed vengeance upon his opponents, whom he described as “vermin” who posed a greater threat to the country than any outside force — rhetoric reminiscent of fascist dictators like Hitler and Mussolini.Mr. Trump has received endorsements from a number of Republican governors in addition to Mr. Abbott, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Kristi Noem of South Dakota.However, he did not secure the endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s popular governor, who is instead backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025

      by

      Donald J. Trump and his allies are already laying the groundwork for a possible second Trump presidency, forging plans for an even more extreme agenda than his first term.Former President Donald J. Trump declared in the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign: “I am your retribution.” He later vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries, starting with President Biden and his family.Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Mr. Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House.Some of these themes trace back to the final period of Mr. Trump’s term in office. By that stage, his key advisers had learned how to more effectively wield power and Mr. Trump had fired officials who resisted some of his impulses and replaced them with loyalists. Then he lost the 2020 election and was cast out of power.Since leaving office, Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies at a network of well-funded groups have advanced policies, created lists of potential personnel and started shaping new legal scaffolding — laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency they hope will commence on Jan. 20, 2025.In a vague statement, two top officials on Mr. Trump’s campaign have sought to distance his campaign team from some of the plans being developed by Mr. Trump’s outside allies, groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him. The statement called news reports about the campaign’s personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical.”The plans described here generally derive from what Mr. Trump has trumpeted on the campaign trail, what has appeared on his campaign website and interviews with Trump advisers, including one who spoke with The New York Times at the request of the campaign.Trump wants to use the Justice Department to take vengeance on his political adversaries.If he wins another term, Mr. Trump has said he would use the Justice Department to have his adversaries investigated and charged with crimes, including saying in June that he would appoint “a real special prosecutor to go after” President Biden and his family. He later declared in an interview with Univision that he could, if someone challenged him politically, have that person indicted.Allies of Mr. Trump have also been developing an intellectual blueprint to cast aside the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigatory independence from White House political direction.Foreshadowing such a move, Mr. Trump had already violated norms in his 2016 campaign by promising to “lock up” his opponent, Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server. While president, he repeatedly told aides he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies, including officials he had fired such as James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director. The Justice Department opened various such investigations but did not bring charges — infuriating Mr. Trump and leading to a split in 2020 with his attorney general, William P. Barr.He intends to carry out an extreme immigration crackdown.Mr. Trump is planning an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.Bolstered by agents reassigned from other federal law enforcement agencies and state police and the National Guard, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would carry out sweeping raids aimed at deporting millions of people each year. Military funds would be used to erect sprawling camps to hold undocumented detainees. A public-health emergency law would be invoked to shut down asylum requests by people arriving at the border. And the government would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents.Trump has plans to use U.S. military force closer to home.While in office, Mr. Trump mused about using the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, an idea that would violate international law unless Mexico consented. That idea has since taken on broader Republican backing, and Mr. Trump intends to make the idea a reality if he returns to the Oval Office.While the Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Mr. Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act to use troops to crack down on protesters after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, but was thwarted, and the idea remains salient among his advisers. Among other things, his top immigration adviser has said they would invoke the Insurrection Act at the southern border to use soldiers to intercept and detain undocumented migrants.Trump and his allies want greater control over the federal bureaucracy and work force.Mr. Trump and his backers want to increase presidential power over federal agencies, centralizing greater control over the entire machinery of government in the White House.They have adopted a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory, which says the president can directly command the entire federal bureaucracy and that it is unconstitutional for Congress to create pockets of independent decision-making authority.As part of that plan, Mr. Trump also intends to revive an effort from the end of his presidency to alter civil-service rules that protect career government professionals, enabling him to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. After Congress failed to enact legislation to block such a change, the Biden administration is developing a regulation to essentially Trump-proof the federal work force. However, since that is merely an executive action, the next Republican president could simply undo it the same way.Trump allies want lawyers who will not restrain him.Politically appointed lawyers sometimes frustrated Mr. Trump’s desires by raising legal objections to his and his top advisers’ ideas. This dynamic has led to a quiet split on the right, as Trump loyalists have come to view the typical Federalist Society lawyer — essentially a mainstream Republican conservative — with disdain.In a potential new term, Mr. Trump’s allies are planning to systematically install more aggressive and ideologically aligned legal gatekeepers who will be more likely to bless contentious actions. Mr. Trump and his 2024 campaign declined to answer a series of detailed questions about what limits, if any, he would recognize on his powers across a range of war, secrecy and law enforcement matters — many raised by his first term — in a New York Times 2024 presidential candidate survey. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Donald Trump en campaña: estas son sus propuestas migratorias

      by

      El expresidente Donald Trump está planeando una expansión extrema de sus medidas represivas contra la migración aplicadas durante su primer mandato si logra regresar al poder en 2025, incluida la preparación de redadas a gran escala de personas que viven en Estados Unidos sin permiso legal y concentrarlas en campamentos cada vez más extensos mientras esperan a ser expulsados.Estos planes restringirían en gran medida tanto la inmigración legal como la ilegal de muchas maneras.Trump quiere revivir las políticas fronterizas de su primer periodo, entre ellas la prohibición del ingreso de personas de ciertas naciones con mayoría musulmana y la reinstauración de una política de la era de la COVID-19 de rechazar solicitudes de asilo, aunque en esta oportunidad basaría el rechazo en aseveraciones de que los migrantes portan otras enfermedades infecciosas como tuberculosis.Trump planea desalojar del país a inmigrantes que habitan aquí sin permiso legal y deportar a millones de personas cada año.Para ayudar a acelerar las deportaciones masivas, Trump está preparando una gran ampliación de una forma de remoción que no requiere de audiencias con el debido proceso. Para ayudar al Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE, por su sigla en inglés) a llevar a cabo redadas masivas, Trump planea reasignar otros agentes federales y sumar a la tarea a policías municipales y efectivos de la Guardia Nacional aportados voluntariamente por los estados gobernados por republicanos.Para aliviar la presión sobre los centros de detención del ICE, Trump desea construir campamentos enormes para detener personas mientras sus casos son procesados y esperan sus vuelos de deportación. Además, con el fin de sortear cualquier negativa del Congreso para apropiarse de los recursos necesarios, Trump redirigiría dinero del presupuesto del ejército, como lo hizo en su primer mandato para invertir más dinero en el muro fronterizo del que el Congreso había autorizado.“Trump desatará el vasto arsenal de poderes federales para implementar la represión migratoria más espectacular”, dijo Stephen Miller, el exasesor de Trump en la Casa Blanca, quien fue el principal arquitecto de sus esfuerzos de control fronterizo.Cooper Neill para The New York TimesEn una referencia pública a sus planes, Trump le dijo a una multitud en Iowa en septiembre: “Siguiendo el modelo de Eisenhower, llevaremos a cabo la operación de deportación nacional más grande en la historia de Estados Unidos”. La referencia en cuestión fue una campaña de 1954 para arrestar y expulsar a inmigrantes mexicanos que recibió su nombre de un insulto étnico: “Operación Espalda Mojada”.La gran cantidad de planes para 2025 de Trump equivale a un ataque a la migración a una escala nunca antes vista en la historia estadounidense moderna. Millones de migrantes que viven en Estados Unidos sin permiso legal tendrían prohibida la entrada al país o serían desarraigados después de años o incluso décadas de haberse establecido aquí.Tal escala de expulsiones planeadas generaría retos logísticos, financieros y diplomáticos y sería impugnada de manera enérgica en los tribunales. Sin embargo, no hay duda de la magnitud y ambición del cambio que Trump está contemplando.En una segunda presidencia de Trump, se cancelarían las visas de los estudiantes extranjeros que hayan participado en manifestaciones en contra de Israel o propalestinas. Los funcionarios consulares estadounidenses en el extranjero recibirían instrucciones de profundizar la revisión ideológica de los solicitantes de visa para bloquear a personas que el gobierno de Trump considere que tienen actitudes indeseables. A las personas con un estatus de protección temporal porque provienen de ciertos países considerados inseguros, lo que les permite vivir y trabajar legalmente en Estados Unidos, se les revocaría ese estatus.De forma similar, muchas personas a quienes se les ha permitido residir en el país temporalmente por razones humanitarias también perderían ese estatus y tendrían que abandonar el país, incluyendo a decenas de miles de afganos desalojados durante la toma del poder de los talibanes en 2021 a quienes se les permitió ingresar a Estados Unidos. Los afganos que poseen visas especiales concedidas a personas que ayudaron a las fuerzas estadounidenses serían investigados de nuevo para verificar que de verdad colaboraron.Además, Trump intentaría poner fin a la ciudadanía por nacimiento para los bebés nacidos en Estados Unidos de padres que viven en el país sin permiso legal mediante la proclamación de que esa política será la nueva posición del gobierno y la instrucción a las agencias de dejar de emitir documentos que comprueben la ciudadanía de esos bebés, como tarjetas de Seguridad Social y pasaportes. La legitimidad legal de esa política, como casi todos los planes de Trump, seguramente terminará debatiéndose en la Corte Suprema.En entrevistas con The New York Times, varios asesores de Trump dieron la descripción más amplia y detallada hasta la fecha de la agenda migratoria del expresidente para un posible segundo mandato. En particular, la campaña de Trump delegó las preguntas para este artículo a Stephen Miller, un arquitecto de las políticas migratorias del primer periodo de Trump que se mantiene cercano al exmandatario y que muy probablemente tendría un cargo importante en su segundo periodo.Miller afirmó en una entrevista que tocó múltiples temas que todos los pasos que los asesores de Trump se están preparando para dar se basan en estatutos existentes; aunque es posible que el equipo de Trump intente renovar las leyes de inmigración, el plan fue elaborado para no necesitar nueva legislación sustantiva. Además, aunque Miller reconoce que surgirían demandas para impugnar casi cada una de las medidas, describió la intimidante variedad de tácticas del equipo de Trump como un “ataque veloz” diseñado para abrumar a los abogados de derechos de los migrantes.“Cualquier activista que dude en lo más mínimo de la determinación del presidente Trump está cometiendo un error drástico: Trump desatará el vasto arsenal de poderes federales para implementar la represión migratoria más espectacular”, dijo Miller, quien agregó: “Los activistas legales de la inmigración no entenderán lo que estará pasando”.Todd Schulte, presidente de FWD.us, un grupo de defensa de la inmigración y la justicia penal que combatió repetidas veces al gobierno de Trump, dijo que los planes del equipo de Trump se basaban en una “demagogia xenófoba” que atrae a su base política más radical.“Los estadounidenses deben entender que estas propuestas políticas son parte de una agenda autoritaria, a menudo ilegal, que destrozaría casi todos los aspectos de la vida estadounidense: hundiría la economía y violaría los derechos civiles básicos de millones de inmigrantes y estadounidenses nativos por igual”, dijo Schulte.‘Envenenando la sangre’Migrantes se congregan frente al Hotel Roosevelt en Manhattan en agosto, esperando ser procesados.Jeenah Moon para The New York TimesDesde que Trump dejó el cargo, el ambiente político en lo referente a la inmigración se ha movido en su dirección. Ahora es más capaz de aprovechar ese entorno si es reelecto de lo que lo era cuando ganó la elección como un candidato recién llegado a la política.El retroceso de la pandemia de COVID-19 y la reanudación del flujo de los viajes han contribuido a generar una crisis migratoria global, con millones de venezolanos y centroamericanos que huyen de la convulsión en sus países y africanos que llegan a naciones latinoamericanas antes de continuar su viaje hacia el norte. A causa de las cifras récord de inmigrantes en la frontera sur y en ciudades como Nueva York y Chicago, los votantes están frustrados e incluso algunos demócratas piden medidas más duras contra los inmigrantes y presionan a la Casa Blanca para que maneje mejor la crisis.Trump y sus asesores han visto la oportunidad y ahora saben mejor cómo aprovecharla. Los asistentes en los que Trump confió en los caóticos primeros días de su primer mandato a veces estaban en desacuerdo y les faltaba experiencia acerca de cómo manipular las palancas del poder federal. Hacia el final de su primer mandato, los funcionarios del gabinete y los abogados que intentaron frenar algunas de sus acciones —como su secretario de Seguridad Nacional y jefe de personal John Kelly— habían sido despedidos y quienes permanecieron con él habían aprendido mucho.En un segundo mandato, Trump planea instalar un equipo que no lo restringirá.Desde que gran parte de la represión a la migración del primer mandato de Trump enfrentó problemas para avanzar en los tribunales, el entorno legal se ha inclinado a su favor: sus cuatro años de nombramientos judiciales dejaron tribunales federales de apelación y una Corte Suprema mucho más conservadores que los tribunales que escucharon las impugnaciones a las políticas de su primer mandato.La lucha contra la Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA, por su sigla en inglés) es un ejemplo de ello.DACA es un programa de la era de Obama que protege de la deportación y concede permisos de trabajo a personas que ingresaron a Estados Unidos de forma ilegal cuando eran niños. Trump trató de ponerle fin, pero la Corte Suprema lo bloqueó por motivos procesales en junio de 2020.Miller indicó que Trump intentaría de nuevo acabar con DACA. Además, la mayoría cinco a cuatro en la Corte Suprema que bloqueó el último intento ya no existe: algunos meses después del fallo sobre DACA, la magistrada Ruth Bader Ginsburg falleció y Trump la remplazó con un sexto miembro conservador, la magistrada Amy Coney Barrett.La retórica de Trump se ha mantenido bien sincronizada con su agenda cada vez más extrema en materia de inmigración.Su avivamiento del miedo y la ira hacia los inmigrantes —presionando por un muro fronterizo y llamando “violadores” a los mexicanos— impulsó su toma del poder del Partido Republicano en 2016. Como presidente, reflexionó en privado sobre la posibilidad de desarrollar una frontera militarizada como la de Israel, preguntó si los migrantes que cruzaban la frontera podrían recibir disparos en las piernas y apoyó un muro fronterizo propuesto rematado con púas desgarrantes y pintado de negro para quemar la piel de los migrantes.Mientras ha hecho campaña para la tercera nominación presidencial consecutiva del partido, su tono antiinmigrante no ha hecho más que volverse más duro. En una entrevista reciente con un sitio web de derecha, Trump afirmó, sin pruebas, que los líderes extranjeros estaban vaciando deliberadamente sus “manicomios” para enviar a los pacientes a través de la frontera sur de Estados Unidos como migrantes. Dijo que los inmigrantes estaban “envenenando la sangre de nuestro país”. En un mitin el miércoles en Florida, los comparó con el asesino en serie y caníbal ficticio Hannibal Lecter, diciendo: “Eso es lo que está entrando a nuestro país en este momento”.De manera similar, Trump había prometido llevar a cabo deportaciones masivas cuando se postuló para el cargo en 2016, pero el gobierno solo logró varios cientos de miles de deportaciones por año bajo su presidencia, a la par de otros gobiernos recientes. Si tienen otra oportunidad, Trump y su equipo están decididos a alcanzar cifras anuales de millones.Mantener fuera a la genteMigrantes esperan ser escoltados por agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza a un área de procesamiento, en septiembre. El avivamiento del miedo y la ira hacia los inmigrantes causado por Trump impulsó su toma del poder del Partido Republicano en 2016. Mark Abramson para The New York TimesEl plan migratorio de Trump es continuar donde se quedó e ir mucho más lejos. No solo reviviría algunas de las políticas que fueron calificadas de draconianas durante su presidencia, muchas de las cuales eliminó la Casa Blanca de Joe Biden, sino que también las ampliaría y las haría más estrictas.Un ejemplo se centra en expandir las políticas del primer periodo dirigidas a mantener a personas extranjeras fuera del país. Trump planea suspender el programa de refugiados y volver a prohibir de manera categórica el ingreso de visitantes de países problemáticos poniendo de nuevo en marcha una versión de su prohibición a los viajes desde varios países principalmente de mayoría musulmana, lo que el presidente Biden calificó de discriminatorio y canceló en su primer día en el cargo.Miller señaló que Trump también utilizaría diplomacia coercitiva para inducir a otros países a colaborar, incluso haciendo de la cooperación una condición para cualquier otro compromiso bilateral. Por ejemplo, un segundo gobierno de Trump buscaría restablecer un acuerdo con México para que los solicitantes de asilo permanezcan en ese país mientras sus peticiones son procesadas (no hay certeza de que México lo acepte; un tribunal mexicano ha precisado que ese trato viola los derechos humanos).Trump también intentaría revivir los acuerdos de “tercer país seguro” con varios países de Centroamérica y establecer acuerdos similares en África, Asia y Sudamérica. En virtud de esos acuerdos, los países aceptan recibir a posibles solicitantes de asilo de otras naciones específicas y permitirles solicitar asilo ahí.Aunque estos acuerdos tradicionalmente solo han cubierto a los inmigrantes que pasaron previamente por un tercer país, la ley federal no exige ese límite y un segundo gobierno de Trump buscaría hacer esos acuerdos sin él, en parte como un disuasivo para los inmigrantes que hacen lo que el equipo de Trump considera solicitudes de asilo ilegítimas.Miller añadió que, al mismo tiempo, los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades de Estados Unidos (CDC, por su sigla en inglés) invocarían la ley de poderes de emergencia de salud pública conocida como Título 42 para rehusarse de nuevo a escuchar cualquier petición de asilo de personas que lleguen a la frontera sur. El gobierno de Trump había discutido internamente esa idea a principios del mandato de Trump, pero algunos secretarios del gabinete se opusieron con el argumento de que no había una emergencia de salud pública que la justificara legalmente. Al final, el gobierno la implementó durante la pandemia de coronavirus.Tras afirmar que desde entonces la idea ha ganado aceptación en la práctica —Biden inicialmente mantuvo la política— Miller aseguró que Trump invocaría el Título 42 y daría como razones “cepas graves de influenza, tuberculosis, sarna, otras enfermedades respiratorias como el virus respiratorio sincitial y más, o simplemente el problema general de que la migración masiva es una amenaza para la salud pública que trae una variedad de enfermedades transmisibles”.Trump y sus asistentes aún no han dicho si reimplementarían uno de los elementos disuasorios más polémicos a la inmigración no autorizada que impulsó como presidente: separar a los niños de sus padres, lo que provocó traumas entre los inmigrantes y dificultades para reunir a las familias. Cuando se le presionó, Trump se negó en repetidas ocasiones a descartar revivir la política. Después de muestras de indignación por la práctica, Trump le puso fin en 2018 y, más tarde, un juez impidió que el gobierno volviera a ponerla en efecto.Deportaciones masivasAgentes federales de inmigración concentrados para una operación de arresto en mayo en Pompano Beach, Florida.Saul Martinez para The New York TimesPoco después de que Trump anunció su campaña presidencial para 2024 en noviembre pasado, se reunió con Tom Homan, quien dirigió el ICE durante el primer año y medio del gobierno de Trump y fue uno de los primeros en proponer la separación de familias para disuadir a los inmigrantes.En una entrevista, Homan recordó que en esa reunión “aceptó regresar” para un segundo mandato y afirmó que “ayudaría a organizar y dirigir la operación de deportación más grande jamás vista en este país”.La visión de los asesores de Trump de deportaciones masivas abruptas llevaría a una convulsión social y económica, lo que perturbaría el mercado de la vivienda e industrias importantes como la agricultura y el sector de servicios.Miller presentó tal perturbación desde una perspectiva favorable.“La deportación masiva será una alteración del mercado laboral celebrada por los trabajadores estadounidenses, a quienes ahora se les ofrecerán salarios más altos con mejores beneficios para ocupar estos puestos de trabajo”, dijo. “Los estadounidenses también celebrarán el hecho de que las leyes de nuestra nación ahora se aplican por igual y que un grupo selecto ya no está mágicamente exento”.Un paso planeado para superar los obstáculos legales y logísticos sería incrementar de manera significativa una forma de deportaciones rápidas conocida como “remoción acelerada”. Esta les niega a los migrantes que viven en el país sin un permiso legal las audiencias habituales y la oportunidad de presentar apelaciones, las cuales pueden tardar meses o años (en especial cuando las personas no están en custodia) y han llevado a un atraso enorme en el procesamiento de los casos. Una ley de 1996 señala que las personas pueden ser sujetas a la remoción acelerada hasta dos años después de su llegada, pero, hasta el momento, el poder ejecutivo la ha usado con mayor cautela expulsando enseguida a personas descubiertas cerca de la frontera poco después de haber cruzado.El gobierno de Trump intentó ampliar el uso de la remoción acelerada, pero un tribunal la bloqueó y después el equipo de Biden canceló la ampliación. No se sabe si la Corte Suprema determinará que es constitucional utilizar la ley contra personas que han vivido durante un periodo significativo en Estados Unidos y expresan temor de persecución si son enviados a su país natal.Trump también ha mencionado que invocaría una ley arcaica, la Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros de 1798, para expulsar a sospechosos de ser miembros de los cárteles de droga y pandillas criminales sin debido proceso. La ley permite deportaciones sumarias de personas provenientes de países con los que Estados Unidos está en guerra, que han invadido Estados Unidos o que han participado en “incursiones predatorias”.Tom Homan, quien dirigió el ICE durante el primer año y medio del gobierno de Trump, afirmó que le dijo al expresidente que “ayudaría a organizar y dirigir la operación de deportación más grande jamás vista en este país”.Rebecca Noble para The New York TimesLa Corte Suprema ha permitido usos en el pasado de esa ley en tiempos de guerra. Sin embargo, su redacción parece requerir un vínculo con las acciones de un gobierno extranjero, así que no se sabe si los magistrados estarían de acuerdo en que un presidente la estire para que abarque la actividad de los cárteles de la droga.De manera más general, Miller manifestó que un nuevo gobierno de Trump pasaría de la práctica del ICE de arrestar a personas específicas a llevar a cabo redadas en lugares de trabajo y otros lugares públicos destinadas a arrestar de una sola vez a grandes cantidades de inmigrantes que viven en el país sin permiso legal.Miller comentó que para hacer que el proceso de encontrar y deportar a los inmigrantes que ya viven en del país sin permiso legal sea “radicalmente más rápido y eficiente”, el equipo de Trump incluiría a “los tipos correctos de abogados y de formuladores de políticas” dispuestos a llevar a cabo tales ideas.Además, debido a la magnitud de los arrestos y deportaciones que se contemplan, planean construir “enormes instalaciones de detención que funcionarían como centros de preparación” para inmigrantes mientras avanzan sus casos y esperan ser trasladados en avión a otros países.Miller declaró que es posible que los nuevos campamentos se construyan “en terrenos abiertos en Texas cerca de la frontera”.Relató que el ejército los construiría bajo la autoridad y control del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional. Aunque advirtió que aún no había planos específicos, dijo que los campamentos luicirían profesionales y similares a otras instalaciones para migrantes que se han construido cerca de la frontera.Estos campos también podrían permitirle al gobierno incrementar el ritmo y el volumen de las deportaciones de personas indocumentadas que han vivido en Estados Unidos durante años y por lo tanto no están sujetas a la expulsión por la vía rápida. Si realizar un esfuerzo a largo plazo para obtener un permiso para permanecer en el país significara permanecer encerrados mientras tanto, algunos podrían darse por vencidos y aceptar de forma voluntaria la expulsión sin pasar por el proceso completo.El uso de estos campamentos, dijo Miller, probablemente se centraría más en adultos solteros porque el gobierno no puede retener a niños de forma indefinida bajo una orden judicial de larga data conocida como el acuerdo Flores. Por lo tanto, cualquier familia llevada a las instalaciones tendría que entrar y salir más rápidamente, dijo.El gobierno de Trump intentó revocar el acuerdo Flores, pero la Corte Suprema no resolvió el asunto antes de que terminara el mandato de Trump. Miller afirmó que el equipo de Trump lo intentaría de nuevo.Miller añadió que para incrementar el número de agentes disponibles para las redadas del ICE, funcionarios de otras agencias federales del orden serían reasignados temporalmente y efectivos de la Guardia Nacional estatal y policías locales, al menos de estados liderados por republicanos dispuestos a hacerlo, serían sumados a los esfuerzos de control de la inmigración.Si bien una ley conocida como Ley Posse Comitatus generalmente prohíbe el uso de las fuerzas armadas con fines de mantenimiento del orden público, otra ley llamada Ley de Insurrección crea una excepción. Miller aseguró que Trump invocaría la Ley de Insurrección en la frontera, lo que permitiría el uso de tropas federales para detener a los inmigrantes.“En resumen”, concluyó Miller, “el presidente Trump hará lo que sea necesario”.Zolan Kanno-Youngs More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025

      by

      Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of proposals meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.With the help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal government against his perceived enemies. “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language network Univision.As the former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same to day to supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”Trump has other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status. Given the former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups like the homeless — Trump has said that the government should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt that some American citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.Included in this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants.In the past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” This too would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.He even suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election. We know what happened next.In addition to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions, desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at the head of the American state. As Damon Linker noted in his essay on these figures for the Opinion section, they exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Sweeping Raids and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans

      by

      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.The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.“Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” said Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s former White House aide who was the chief architect of his border control efforts.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesIn a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.”The constellation of Mr. Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical, financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Mr. Trump is eyeing.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.Similarly, numerous people who have been allowed to live in the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons would also lose that status and be kicked out, including tens of thousands of the Afghans who were evacuated amid the 2021 Taliban takeover and allowed to enter the United States. Afghans holding special visas granted to people who helped U.S. forces would be revetted to see if they really did.And Mr. Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented parents — by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. That policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Mr. Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court.In interviews with The New York Times, several Trump advisers gave the most expansive and detailed description yet of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda in a potential second term. In particular, Mr. Trump’s campaign referred questions for this article to Stephen Miller, an architect of Mr. Trump’s first-term immigration policies who remains close to him and is expected to serve in a senior role in a second administration.All of the steps Trump advisers are preparing, Mr. Miller contended in a wide-ranging interview, rely on existing statutes; while the Trump team would likely seek a revamp of immigration laws, the plan was crafted to need no new substantive legislation. And while acknowledging that lawsuits would arise to challenge nearly every one of them, he portrayed the Trump team’s daunting array of tactics as a “blitz” designed to overwhelm immigrant-rights lawyers.“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Mr. Miller said, adding, “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy group that repeatedly fought the Trump administration, said the Trump team’s plans relied on “xenophobic demagoguery” that appeals to his hardest-core political base.“Americans should understand these policy proposals are an authoritarian, often illegal, agenda that would rip apart nearly every aspect of American life — tanking the economy, violating the basic civil rights of millions of immigrants and native-born Americans alike,” Mr. Schulte said.‘Poisoning the Blood’Migrants gather outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan in August, waiting to be processed.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesSince Mr. Trump left office, the political environment on immigration has moved in his direction. He is also more capable now of exploiting that environment if he is re-elected than he was when he first won election as an outsider.The ebbing of the Covid-19 pandemic and resumption of travel flows have helped stir a global migrant crisis, with millions of Venezuelans and Central Americans fleeing turmoil and Africans arriving in Latin American countries before continuing their journey north. Amid the record numbers of migrants at the southern border and beyond it in cities like New York and Chicago, voters are frustrated and even some Democrats are calling for tougher action against immigrants and pressuring the White House to better manage the crisis.Mr. Trump and his advisers see the opening, and now know better how to seize it. The aides Mr. Trump relied upon in the chaotic early days of his first term were sometimes at odds and lacked experience in how to manipulate the levers of federal power. By the end of his first term, cabinet officials and lawyers who sought to restrain some of his actions — like his Homeland Security secretary and chief of staff, John F. Kelly — had been fired, and those who stuck with him had learned much.In a second term, Mr. Trump plans to install a team that will not restrain him.Since much of Mr. Trump’s first-term immigration crackdown was tied up in the courts, the legal environment has tilted in his favor: His four years of judicial appointments left behind federal appellate courts and a Supreme Court that are far more conservative than the courts that heard challenges to his first-term policies.The fight over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals provides an illustration.DACA is an Obama-era program that shields from deportation and grants work permits to people who were brought unlawfully to the United States as children. Mr. Trump tried to end it, but the Supreme Court blocked him on procedural grounds in June 2020.Mr. Miller said Mr. Trump would try again to end DACA. And the 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court that blocked the last attempt no longer exists: A few months after the DACA ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Mr. Trump replaced her with a sixth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.Mr. Trump’s rhetoric has more than kept up with his increasingly extreme agenda on immigration.His stoking of fear and anger toward immigrants — pushing for a border wall and calling Mexicans rapists — fueled his 2016 takeover of the Republican Party. As president, he privately mused about developing a militarized border like Israel’s, asked whether migrants crossing the border could be shot in the legs and wanted a proposed border wall topped with flesh-piercing spikes and painted black to burn migrants’ skin.As he has campaigned for the party’s third straight presidential nomination, his anti-immigrant tone has only grown harsher. In a recent interview with a right-wing website, Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that foreign leaders were deliberately emptying their “insane asylums” to send the patients across America’s southern border as migrants. He said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” And at a rally on Wednesday in Florida, he compared them to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, saying, “That’s what’s coming into our country right now.”Mr. Trump had similarly vowed to carry out mass deportations when running for office in 2016, but the government only managed several hundred thousand removals per year under his presidency, on par with other recent administrations. If they get another opportunity, Mr. Trump and his team are determined to achieve annual numbers in the millions.Keeping People OutMigrants wait to be escorted by Border Patrol agents to a processing area in September. Mr. Trump’s stoking of fear and anger toward immigrants fueled his 2016 takeover of the Republican Party. Mark Abramson for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s immigration plan is to pick up where he left off and then go much farther. He would not only revive some of the policies that were criticized as draconian during his presidency, many of which the Biden White House ended, but also expand and toughen them.One example centers on expanding first-term policies aimed at keeping people out of the country. Mr. Trump plans to suspend the nation’s refugee program and once again categorically bar visitors from troubled countries, reinstating a version of his ban on travel from several mostly Muslim-majority countries, which President Biden called discriminatory and ended on his first day in office.Mr. Trump would also use coercive diplomacy to induce other nations to help, including by making cooperation a condition of any other bilateral engagement, Mr. Miller said. For example, a second Trump administration would seek to re-establish an agreement with Mexico that asylum seekers remain there while their claims are processed. (It is not clear that Mexico would agree; a Mexican court has said that deal violated human rights.)Mr. Trump would also push to revive “safe third country” agreements with several nations in Central America, and try to expand them to Africa, Asia and South America. Under such deals, countries agree to take would-be asylum seekers from specific other nations and let them apply for asylum there instead.While such arrangements have traditionally only covered migrants who had previously passed through a third country, federal law does not require that limit and a second Trump administration would seek to make those deals without it, in part as a deterrent to migrants making what the Trump team views as illegitimate asylum claims.At the same time, Mr. Miller said, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would invoke the public health emergency powers law known as Title 42 to again refuse to hear any asylum claims by people arriving at the southern border. The Trump administration had internally discussed that idea early in Mr. Trump’s term, but some cabinet secretaries pushed back, arguing that there was no public health emergency that would legally justify it. The administration ultimately implemented it during the coronavirus pandemic.Saying the idea has since gained acceptance in practice — Mr. Biden initially kept the policy — Mr. Miller said Mr. Trump would invoke Title 42, citing “severe strains of the flu, tuberculosis, scabies, other respiratory illnesses like R.S.V. and so on, or just a general issue of mass migration being a public health threat and conveying a variety of communicable diseases.”Mr. Trump and his aides have not yet said whether they would re-enact one of the most contentious deterrents to unauthorized immigration that he pursued as president: separating children from their parents, which led to trauma among migrants and difficulties in reuniting families. When pressed, Mr. Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out reviving the policy. After an outcry over the practice, Mr. Trump ended it in 2018 and a judge later blocked the government from putting it back into effect.Mass DeportationsFederal immigration-enforcement officers gathered for an arrest operation in May in Pompano Beach, Fla.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesSoon after Mr. Trump announced his 2024 campaign for president last November, he met with Tom Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration and was an early proponent of separating families to deter migrants.In an interview, Mr. Homan recalled that in that meeting, he “agreed to come back” in a second term and would “help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”Trump advisers’ vision of abrupt mass deportations would be a recipe for social and economic turmoil, disrupting the housing market and major industries including agriculture and the service sector.Mr. Miller cast such disruption in a favorable light.“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.”One planned step to overcome the legal and logistical hurdles would be to significantly expand a form of fast-track deportations known as “expedited removal.” It denies undocumented immigrants the opportunity to seek asylum hearings and file appeals, which can take months or years — especially when people are not in custody — and has led to a large backlog. A 1996 law says people can be subject to expedited removal for up to two years after arriving, but to date the executive branch has used it more cautiously, swiftly expelling people picked up near the border soon after crossing.The Trump administration tried to expand the use of expedited removal, but a court blocked it and then the Biden team canceled the expansion. It remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will rule that it is constitutional to use the law against people who have been living for a significant period in the United States and express fear of persecution if sent home.Mr. Trump has also said he would invoke an archaic law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process. That law allows for summary deportation of people from countries with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.”Tom Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration, said he told Mr. Trump he would “help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThe Supreme Court has upheld past uses of that law in wartime. But its text seems to require a link to the actions of a foreign government, so it is not clear whether the justices will allow a president to stretch it to encompass drug cartel activity.More broadly, Mr. Miller said a new Trump administration would shift from the ICE practice of arresting specific people to carrying out workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of unauthorized immigrants at once. While every administration has used detention facilities, because of the magnitude of deportations being contemplated, the Trump team plans to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for migrants waiting to be flown to other countries, Mr. Miller said. Such an undertaking would be fast-tracked, he said, “by bringing in the right kinds of attorneys and the right kinds of policy thinkers” — taking what is typically a methodical process “and making it radically more quick and efficient.”Mr. Miller said the new camps would likely be built “on open land in Texas near the border.” He said the military would construct them under the authority and control of the Department of Homeland Security. While he cautioned that there were no specific blueprints yet, he said the camps would look professional and similar to other facilities for migrants that have been built near the border.The use of these camps, he said, would likely be focused more on single adults because the government cannot indefinitely hold children under a longstanding court order known as the Flores settlement. So any families brought to the facilities would have to be moved in and out more quickly, Mr. Miller said.The Trump administration tried to overturn the Flores settlement, but the Supreme Court did not resolve the matter before Mr. Trump’s term ended. Mr. Miller said the Trump team would try again.To increase the number of agents available for ICE sweeps, Mr. Miller said, officials from other federal law enforcement agencies would be temporarily reassigned, and state National Guard troops and local police officers, at least from willing Republican-led states, would be deputized for immigration control efforts.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.“Bottom line,” he said, “President Trump will do whatever it takes.”Zolan Kanno-Youngs More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Haley Says She Would ‘Send Back’ Migrants Already Here, Pledges to ‘Close’ Border

      by

      Tough promises on immigration from Nikki Haley and her rivals for the Republican nomination face logistical and legal barriers.On the national debate stage, in interviews and at town halls, the message on immigration from every top Republican in the 2024 presidential race has resounded clearly: It is time to shut down the nation’s southern border.Coming into view now is how candidates would approach the issue of undocumented immigrants who are already in the United States — of both those who have been living and working in the country for years, and those who have entered more recently.In a packed diner in Londonderry, N.H., on Thursday, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who has called on the United States to “close” the border and defund “sanctuary cities,” was pressed on just that issue by a potential voter. The question of how to provide an avenue to citizenship or permanent legal residency for immigrants, whether undocumented or under temporary forms of protection like DACA, has long been at the center of the debate around overhauling the nation’s immigration laws.Her response to Neil Philcrantz, 71, a Republican and retired quality engineer from the nearby town of Hudson, was revealing in its encapsulation of Republicans’ embrace of hard-line tactics and her own rhetorical shifts on the issue.A question for Nikki Haley“If you do get ‘catch and deport,’ what would you do with all of the ones who are here now?”The subtextThe phrase “catch and deport” refers to Ms. Haley’s campaign trail riff on the term “catch and release,” which generally refers to the longtime practice of allowing people who have been vetted and deemed a low risk to live in communities, instead of detention, as they wait for their immigration cases to move through the courts.Former President Donald Trump made ending the practice central to his first White House campaign, and frequently derided it while in office. But his administration widely expanded it in 2019 before scaling it back again, as it struggled to process an increase in families arriving at the nation’s southern border from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. In 2020, Trump officials began to turn away people who sought asylum at the border, which led to their expulsion without the right to claim they feared returning to their home country because of persecution or torture. The removals were carried out amid the coronavirus pandemic, under a public health order called Title 42, which expired under President Biden in May.With migration patterns changing and reaching new highs around the world, the Biden administration has expanded legal pathways to entry for some migrants. Still, illegal border crossings continue to set records, straining city support systems. Ms. Haley has said she would immediately deport those who enter unlawfully.Haley’s answer“OK, of the six to seven million that have come over since Biden did this — this is going to sound harsh — but you send them back. And the reason you send them back, the reason you send them back is because, my parents, they came here legally. They put in the time, they put in the price. I take care of my parents. They live with us. They’re 87 and 89. There’s not a time I’ve had dinner with my mom when she doesn’t say, ‘Are those people still crossing the border?’ And the reason is, they are offended by what’s happening on the border. And when you allow those six or seven million to come, to all those people who’ve done it the right way, you’re letting them jump the line.”The subtextAs governor of South Carolina, Ms. Haley signed some of the harshest immigration laws in the country in 2011, including measures that required police officers to check the immigration status of some people. But she tended to refrain from fire and brimstone in her language on the issue, and tended to describe immigrants and refugees as part of the fabric of American society.On the campaign trail now, Ms. Haley and her top rivals have spent months trying to outdo each other with extreme immigration proposals and rhetoric as the party’s primary base has veered hard right on the issue. Ms. Haley, the daughter of Indian American immigrants, has in particular wielded her background to significant effect as a messenger for hard-line proposals.Undocumented immigrants already in the country, she continued on Thursday, should be divided between those working and paying taxes and “those that are feeding off the system,” she said. “If they’re feeding off the system, you send them back.”Why it mattersImmigration has become a dominant issue among Republicans, and it is particularly salient in New Hampshire, where a Suffolk University/Boston Globe/USA TODAY poll released last month found that immigration and the border were the top concern for voters likely to cast their ballot in the G.O.P. primary.Responses like Ms. Haley’s capture the way Mr. Trump’s approach, both in style and substance, has become Republican conviction as the nation’s immigration challenges have grown more intractable.With her call to “send them back,” she embraces a position that Mr. DeSantis took in early October regarding undocumented immigrants who have entered during Mr. Biden’s presidency. Mr. Trump has also pledged to enact mass deportations. Other promises among the G.O.P. field include calls to eliminate or limit birthright citizenship; and ramp up military responses at the southern border. The tough proposals face logistical and legal barriers.Much of the candidates’ language tends to conflate illegal and legal types of immigration, and overestimates the number of people who have entered the country unlawfully under President Biden. And some of the measures may not be feasible; plans to deport hundreds of thousands of people would require huge investments in immigration officers, judges and detention spaces. And the economic impact could be enormous.But at Ms. Haley’s town hall gatherings and campaign events, voters have consistently asked her for more in-depth solutions to fix an immigration system where legal migration to the country has become almost impossible, though many businesses and local economies are struggling through labor shortages, and rely on foreign workers.On a farm in a rural town in Iowa this fall, business owners welcomed a pledge from Ms. Haley to ease legal pathways for new workers as an effort to alleviate labor shortages. At a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire last month, one audience member asked what Ms. Haley believed was “the compassionate way,” or “the American way,” to handle the undocumented immigrants living in the United States. What the voter saidFor Mr. Philcrantz, Ms. Haley’s answer was satisfying, he said in a follow-up interview. He had been undecided when he walked into the diner Thursday afternoon. A few hours later, he called a reporter back to declare that he had changed his mind: “I am voting for Nikki.” More