'License to abuse': Analyst warns Trump plans to deputize MAGA force bigger than U.S. Army
By Kathleen Culliton,
7 hours ago
Supporters of Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump raise MAGA hats, on the day Trump returns for a rally at the site of the July assassination attempt against him, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Former President Donald Trump has promised a "bloody story" that involves assembling patrol groups of MAGA loyalists larger than the U.S. Army, according to a new analysis.
The New Republic Thursday published an extensive report on the machinations of the Republican presidential nominee's immigration policy proposals that would assemble troops, conduct raids and deport people by the millions.
"Getting them out will be a bloody story,” Trump said at a September rally.
According to Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump's mass deportation program will begin by removing "the worst people” before considering the rule of law, or "what you can’t do," the New Republic reported.
Trump has said he'll bring in Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who helped craft policy that separated nearly 4,000 children — about 1,000 of whom had not been returned as of February of this year — from their parents.
Homan is currently the face of a group called Border911 that shares video of men conducting raids accompanied by heavy metal music and declares “the border is our theater of war,” the New Republic reported.
“He has been so great on television,” Trump has reportedly said.
Former White House adviser Stephen Miller said enforcement will be managed by red state National Guard troops that the Trump administration would deputize as immigration enforcement officers, according to the report.
Radley Balko, author of "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces" said in an analysis that the impact of this policy would be massive.
"Balko estimated such a force would exceed the number of active-duty U.S. Army troops," the New Republic reported, "detaining a population at least twice that of New York City."
The American Civil Liberties Union has called the program a “License to Abuse."
Trump says the plan is to deport up to 20 million people, nearly double the 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization as of 2022, according to the report.
"Sheriffs especially have pushed beyond the purported limits of the program, laying the groundwork for further abuse, which is what Trump is proposing: turning any law enforcement agency into an immigration enforcement agency," the New Republic reported.
"Lives built here over generations could be shattered with one agent’s haphazard decisions, with one vindictive neighbor’s call."
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