President-elect Donald Trump has unveiled his plan of using executive power for mass deportation once he is sworn in next month.
Trump intends to pass his agenda with Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff and Tom Homan as his “border czar,” along with loyalist Kristi Noem as head of the Department of Homeland Security (if she is confirmed by the Senate). He also holds the majority in both chambers of Congress, albeit with a razor-thin majority in the House and a conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court.
Trump has said he will look to roll back programs he tried to end in his first term such as Temporary Protected Status.
And despite seemingly flipping his stance on DACA over the weekend on NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, many advocates and DACA recipients remain wary.
Oscar Chacon of the immigrant rights group Alianza Americas believes people under legal protections including DACA might be in more immediate danger than those who are undocumented.
“These are people that have shared with the federal government information about themselves,” said Chacon. “So all that data is in their possession. They can take action about it.”
Indeed, Trump’s actions could affect roughly one million people in Florida.
Advocates like Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigrant Coalition highlight the potential economic ramifications. Kennedy continuously cites a report made by the state back in January.
“Retired people are moving into the state and younger people are moving out,” said Kennedy. “And that is leading to a decline in the labor participation of the state. And actually this report, and it’s not by us, its by the state of Florida, recommends net migration into the state to fix this.”
Kennedy and the coalition have also lobbied the federal government to extend these protections to migrants before the new administration takes over next month.
“We have just had a blitzkrieg of meetings with the White House, with members of Congress.” said Kennedy. “[We’re] asking them to urge the White House to re-designate Temporary Protected Status to nations before Dec. 19, which is the deadline to issue executive actions. And that’s because if we do it now, we can get out the forms fast enough for people to apply, and at least get a driver’s license.”
He adds that this is especially urgent for many Nicaraguans after the Biden administration announced in October that it would not renew the status of migrants under his humanitarian parole program.
“It does create the urgency for them to protect these people who had gotten protection and then were left in limbo by this administration.”
However, a major aspect of Trump’s mass deportation plan will be the expansion of detention centers.
Last month, the ACLU received documents from one of the four Freedom of Information Act lawsuits it has filed since late September. They revealed ICE capacity could increase by 600 beds in at least two facilities in New Jersey.
This comes as the organization looks to pressure Biden to “close detention facilities and halt ICE’s current detention expansion plans.”
The ACLU told Caplin News that this will also be useful during the Trump administration.
“It’s a critical way about how we’re thinking about setting the stage for any potential litigation on mass deportations,” it said. “Again, we don’t know what that policy will look like, but understanding what infrastructure is already available really helps set the stage for future legal challenges to come.”
