The Dictatorship
Trump has assembled a mass deportation dream team
President-elect Donald Trump has been busy all week rolling out the members of his incoming administration. There are three names that stand out for how effective his choices are likely to be in their mission: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for secretary of homeland security, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Tom Homan for “border czar” and top Trump adviser Stephen Miller for White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.
Even as the rest of the administration may bumble about and clash with one another, that might not be the case when it comes to enforcing Trump’s dark immigration plan. Miller, Homan and Noem have the potential to be distressingly effective at working together. The only limit they will likely face is how much the public will allow to be carried out in its name.
Miller, Homan and Noem have the potential to be distressingly effective at working together.
In his new dual role, Miller will set the overall contours of American immigration policy. Homan will likely be charged with figuring out the operational details of Miller’s plans. And Noem will be tasked with implementing those policies and carrying out Trump’s promised deportation of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.
One of the few holdovers from the early Trump days, Miller was a speechwriter and senior counselor under Trump in his first term. By the end of Trump’s term, he held tremendous sway over immigration policy and had helped purge the ranks of officials he deemed not aggressive enough in deterring border crossings. He helped shape many of the harshest immigration policies Trump implemented, including the so-called Muslim travel ban and the use of Title 42 to shut down the border entirely.
His main skill has always been taking Trump’s worst impulses about immigrants and making them almost palpable for moderate listeners. But given a title to match his ambitions and a direct line to Trump, he’ll have little to prevent him from being as extreme as he’d always hoped. Among the plans that Miller is spearheading are mass deportation camps to hold those collected in ICE workplace sweeps while being processed for expulsion and reinstating Title 42 at the border.
Aside from cracking down on undocumented immigrants, he has his sights on limiting immigration, as well. Miller has supported an end to birthright citizenship and pledged to “turbocharge” his efforts to strip naturalized citizens of their legal status. He has also prepared to end parole programs for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua and let Temporary Protected Status protections expire for more than 800,000 people.
While Miller forms the plans, it will likely be Homan working to coordinate carrying them out. Trump has indicated he’d like to see the military take part in the forced removal plans, which would require Pentagon buy-in and a likely transfer of money from defense programs to pay for a surge in detention facilities. There will be legal challenges that the Justice Department will have to defend against. Homan would be the point person making sure everyone is staying on the same page.
It’s worth noting that Homan’s job, such as it is, exists only as two words on paper right now, as there is no “border czar” job title in the federal system and no pool of resources for him to tap. It’s also fun to remember that he was promised, but never granted, a similar role in the first Trump administration. But Homan has the experience needed to carry out Miller’s wishes. He was hired to head ICE’s deportation arm before eventually becoming its director and implemented Trump’s “zero tolerance” child separation policy.
Immigration policy will be entirely top down with Noem in place, passing from Miller to Homan Noem’s orders to ICE and Customs and Border Patrol to carry them out
Meanwhile, Noem’s ascension is testament to how much all politics is national now. Leading South Dakota has given her little contact with the immigration system. According to the Migration Policy Instituteas of 2022 only 3.5% of the state’s population was foreign-born, far less than many parts of the country. But Noem has been extremely vocal about the supposed “invasion” taking place at the southern border, enthusiastically embracing Trump’s narrative and pulling stunts like deploying National Guard members to the Texas-Mexico border.
She would also be the only one of the three with any legal authority to carry out these deportation plans — or the money from Congress to do so. Immigration policy will be entirely top down with Noem in place, passing from Miller to Homan to Noem’s orders to ICE and Customs and Border Patrol to carry them out. It doesn’t matter if she herself doesn’t have any policy experience, not so long as she’s willing to be a figurehead for the White House and Senate Republicans are willing to confirm her.
There are still logistical problems that would have to be overcome should Miller’s deportation plan come to fruition. Homan said this week that he’d double the ICE presence in sanctuary cities like New York if needed, but ICE is already finding itself shorthanded. There’s also a shortage of immigration judges, whose courts face a massive backlog of cases. But that all supposes that there’s any interest from the administration in being efficient or precise in the process of forcibly removing millions from their homes.
Let’s not forget that the family separation policy was a humanitarian disaster. The conditions that families were held in were terrible, surpassed in the lack of care shown only by the failure of recordkeeping by the administration. DHS said in a report this year that there are still 1,360 children “without confirmed reunifications” with their families. We could call it incompetent if the goal had been to provide humane shelter for migrants being detained or speed their processing through the immigration system. But that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to make other migrants too afraid to cross the border.
Similarly, in this case, the goal isn’t to be efficient or precise. Miller is likely unconcerned about how long people might have to wait in hastily built camps before being deported. The odds seem high that there will be citizens who are rounded up and forced to prove their right to stay in the country. Homan has suggested avoiding family separations by deporting whole familiesproblematically hinting that children born in America would be illegally expelled, as well.
There is no way to carry out the kind of operation that Miller and his associates have in mind ethically or humanely — and so they won’t try to do so. In practice it will more likely be a deliberately cruel assault on human rights and dignity. But mass deportation doesn’t have to be done well to make Trump’s vision a reality. It just needs to be done.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for BLN Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.
A federal judge in Washington has denied a bid Wednesday brought by a watchdog group to immediately block the Justice Department’s “anti-weaponization” fund, for now choosing to trust the department’s assertions that it is not moving forward with the fund.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled immediately, denying Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the Department of Justice from taking steps to create the fund.
Throughout the 30-minute hearing, the DOJ reiterated that the administration was not moving forward with the nearly $1.8 billion fund, which seeks to compensate individuals who allege they have been politically targeted or victimized by the DOJ.
Andrew Block, the only lawyer present for the government, repeatedly cited Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s June 2 congressional testimonyin which he said the administration was “not moving forward” with plans to create the fund.
Leon indicated he agreed with the DOJ’s position that the case appeared to be moot, saying he was not persuaded there was an issue for the court to decide regarding the creation of the fund. He issued a stern warning to the DOJ, saying, “Don’t play possum with this court!” — meaning he does not want to be deceived.
The plaintiffs argued Blanche’s testimony did not amount to an official cancellation. Nikhel Sus, CREW’s attorney, said Blanche “refused to memorialize that rescission,” or in other words, put it in writing. Sus said that was “highly unusual.” Leon responded, “This whole case is highly unusual to say the least.”
Leon asked the government twice why they would not just rescind the order that established the fund. Block responded, “I don’t know,” and pointed again to Blanche’s public statements about the fund’s future.
Both Leon and Sus raised the issue of Trump’s continued public defense of the fund. “It can still be an important issue and also not moving forward,” Block said. “That isn’t a direction to move forward with the fund.”
Although Leon rejected CREW’s bid for an immediate block, he indicated he is still considering its request for a longer-term block against the fund.
A block order from a separate federal judge in Virginia remains in effect until at least Friday.
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.
The date when Social Security’s trust fund is expected to run out of money just got bumped up. The fund is now projected to empty in 2032according to a new report released by Social Security’s trustees.
The new depletion date isn’t an earth-shaking change — it’s only a quarter earlier than the estimate in last year’s report. But it illustrates how President Donald Trump’s policies are degrading a program he promised to never jeopardize — and accelerating an approaching crisis in how our government will assist the elderly and disabled.
The report names three factors that contributed to the earlier insolvency date. One is a declining fertility rate, but the other two drivers can be traced back to Trump: a drop in immigration into the country, and the “substantial effect” of the tax policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill he signed last summer.
Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities.
Reduced immigration during Trump’s second term — especially when coupled with a declining fertility rate — strains Social Security because the program is funded through payroll taxes. Those come out of people’s paychecks, and fewer workers supporting an aging population means the program receives less revenue. Indeed, Social Security already has been tapping its trust fund for the better part of the past two decades because the program’s costs have exceeded its cash income. And as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out last yearlast year’s tax cuts were a boon to the rich but a bust for the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.
To be clear, if the fund is depleted, Social Security won’t go belly up. Benefits will continue to be paid out, but there will be a large drop in the amount. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the “average monthly cut would total $500, which is more than what the average retired household spends on groceries each month.”
That would be a huge blow to the budgets of many older Americans. Social Security is a major source of income for most retirees, and roughly 40% of beneficiaries over the age of 65 rely on it for most of their income. And it would mark the destabilization of the sole source of retirement security for most Americans that is supposed to be insulated from ups and downs — unlike 401K plans. As the CBPP has pointed outSocial Security is “most workers’ only source of guaranteed retirement income that is not subject to investment risk or financial market fluctuations.”
Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities. His cuts to the Social Security Administration have left offices understaffedincreased wait timesand reduced quality of customer service.
Ultimately, Trump is exacerbating a colossal social safety net problem that predates him, and the trust fund will hit dire straits after he has left office. Democrats need to have clear plans for shoring up the program and making it robust for the future — which will require not being sheepish about taxes as a tool for renewing the social contract. And when Republicans try to claim that they, too, are champions of Social Security, all Democrats need to do is point to the truth.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The latest from Northern Ireland: “The family of a man who lost an eye in a knife attack appealed for calm on Wednesday after the incident triggered a wave of anti-immigrant violence in Belfast overnight, with masked men burning families out of their homes and torching vehicles. The appeal came as a Sudanese man appeared in court charged with attempted murder and as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and politicians in Northern Ireland condemned the violence by ‘masked thugs’ that had targeted ethnic minorities.”
* In related news: “The British government hit out at X owner Elon Musk Wednesday, accusing him of whipping up tensions online ahead of disorder in Belfast.”
* The tenuous state of a dubious ceasefire: “Trump said the U.S. is going to hit Iran ‘hard’ today when pressed by reporters in the Oval Office about his statement earlier that Tehran will ‘pay the price’ for taking ‘too long’ to reach a peace agreement. ‘Well, we’re going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard, resuming bombing,’ he said.”
* The latest casualty figures from Lebanon: “Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon has killed at least 3,666 people, including 131 healthcare workers, and injured more than 11,300 since the U.S. and Israel began their war with Iran in late February, the Lebanese health ministry reported yesterday.”
* The changing nature of modern warfare: “Ukraine is wreaking havoc on unarmored trucks and trains in the battlefield’s rear, using drones with upgraded engines and batteries, integrated Starlink communication systems and new artificial-intelligence capabilities. The ramped-up attacks are causing fuel shortages, complicating troop rotations and reducing Russian military activity on the front.”
* This seems like a reasonable request: “Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee demanded Wednesday that Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump’s controversial pick for acting director of national intelligence, submit to a full security check before assuming the post, including an examination of his financial holdings and foreign contacts.”
* Some market trends can’t be stopped despite the White House’s best efforts: “Even as President Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the U.S. and remains the leading source of new power. Data released Wednesday by global energy think tank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said.”
* A bizarre schedule for a nonemergency vanity project: “Federal officials are laying more groundwork to begin construction on President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, sharing additional documents that detail the project’s scope and an aggressive timetable for potentially completing work before Trump’s term ends. According to National Park Service documents posted this month, the administration envisions 20 hours per day of construction on the arch, year-round, in hopes of completing the project within two to three years.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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