Bulwark Takes - MAGA’s Plans To Gloss Up Mass Deportations

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Adrian Carrasquillo deep dives into MAGA world's plans to create narratives around mass deportations with a gilded frame to control the public perception of Donald Trump's extreme executive order.  Read more in Adrian's newsletter Huddled Masses, Inside Trump World’s Plans To Gloss Up Mass Deportations

Hey guys, this is Adrian Karaskia with The Bulwark. Thanks for tuning in. I want to talk today about my story that I have. It's titled Inside Trump World's Plans to Gloss Up Their Mass Deportations. But basically, the way I've been thinking about it is the MAGA movies are coming. We've seen at the beginning, and not just at the beginning of this administration, we've seen that in Trump's first term, first time as president, they did a policy called family separation. And when you work a double shift during the day and you're an American

citizen and you're a voter, a lot of people tune out politics when it's not election season. And you hear family separation maybe on TV in the background, you don't know what that means. And then a lot of media footage started coming out. Photos, ProPublica had footage from inside detention centers. And suddenly, there were these high profile images of kids in cages. Now, all of a sudden, we knew what family separation meant. We knew that this was a policy. And what happened quickly after that is a lot of, you know, American public opinion kind of turned against Trump and sort of derailed his immigration plans during his first term. So now we step into the second term. And, you know, they have learned some lessons from that. So now they want to pursue a mass

deportation policy. Following the Eisenhower model, we will use all necessary state, local, federal, and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. Gotta do it. Gotta do it. And there's been like this deeply patriotic gloss on all the things you're doing. It's this huge PR effort. It's this gigantic machine led by and taken part willfully by the Fox News and the New York Post of the world posting administration propaganda, right? There's these gigantic military planes and the angle of the photo, just the planes taking up the whole image and they're taking away these, these people. And they're saying that they're all these like horrible hardened criminals and gang

members and murders and things like that. Um, you know, it's been really interesting because they're doing this. And as I've written, and if you follow any of those stories, it is now US policy that we are being invaded from the southern border. That's not just something that Trump is saying on the campaign trail. That is something that was one of the initial executive orders that led to the national emergency, right? So now that it is officially US policy that we're being invaded, even though the New York

Times did it both right before he was inaugurated that basically the border was quiet. And now we have military vehicles at the border. I don't know if anybody watches Lioness, Taylor Sheridan show. It's like scenes out of Lioness. There's just these incredible military vehicles at the border. A lot of the reporting shows that crossings are down, but it's in the interest of the Trump administration to say that this is what's going on right now, that it's lawless and that we need to stop this. And sort of enter this PR campaign where you have DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in New York, on the streets of New York in like tactical military gear, cosplaying as an ICE agent. Are you aware you're in violation of our laws?

So we've seen this. And it's this understanding that they want to get their media out there and they want to control the narrative. And, you know, I thought it was really interesting. There's the MAGA personality, Benny Johnson. He's on X. And he had posted a video of the influencer Theo Vaughn sort of like posting a video for someone's friend

and making fun of their deportation. Heard you got deported, dude. Bye. You know, a commenter wrote, and this really stuck with me, I put it in the story, they said, we're going to have to suck it up. It's really going to get tough. They're going to tug at our emotions. Stand strong, America. It's for the greater good. And so what they're saying is they know that tough images are coming. They know, as is said by one of the people in my story, that no one likes to see a father ripped from his family, even if they're, quote, a US citizen or an illegal alien, right? So into this void steps Steve Cortez. He's this sort of MAGA businessman. He was on Wall Street for two decades, and he's been a spokesperson for Trump in 2016 and 2020. And as part of his group that he says aimed at American workers, he is doing this series of mini documentaries where he says that, you know, campaigning for the president's agenda doesn't end election day, basically. Patriots, I'm coming to you from a crime scene,

the U.S.-Mexico border. So, you know, he does these videos on X and on Facebook. He did one at the DNC convention where he had a young Venezuelan migrant named Edwin. This is my new acquaintance, Edwin. Say hello. My name is Edwin. Nice to meet you. Edwin is from Venezuela. And we're going to take Edwin into the DNC so that he can meet the Democrats who want open borders. He should meet his new friends, hear speakers, and learn about the Democratic Party. So Edwin, let's head in, shall we? Excelente.

In that video, it's really clear that Edwin doesn't know what the hell he's doing there. I asked Steve if he paid Edwin and he refused to say. I asked him multiple times. Edwin doesn't know that he's being used as a political prop in this video. And he has a really nice kid and he's smiling. And Steve says, we're going to try to bring you into the Democratic convention. What Steve is arguing in that video is that Democrats are for open borders, so they should just leave Edwin in. Right. And and clearly security says you don't have a credential, you can't come through. And Steve makes it this big. He hands it up to the camera and says, oh, it's like a border wall. You're stopping. So I tell you about those videos because he's starting up some new documentaries. And that's what the story is about. That's the scoop that I had today. And so he's going first to Star County. Star County in

Texas has a distinction of being the most Hispanic county in America, 97% Hispanic. It's pretty insane if you think about that. But in some of the Texas border towns, there were a very, very large number of his back, right? And so he's going down there. He walked through a video on the effect of illegal immigration. Now, this was a town that 60% voted, I think, for Hillary Clinton in 2016. So this is a place that has changed this area. And it was slightly more supportive of Trump, and he won that county. But there's many reasons for that, right? And as we know, the economy is part of that reason in a lot of the parts of the country, and it's certainly part of it there. But Steve's going to do this video about illegal immigration. And this is a friendly county, by the way. Right after

election day, the land commissioner of Texas offered up 1,400 acres in Starr County for whatever the administration wants. If you want to build a gigantic detention center, whatever, we want to help. So this is friendly territory there. He also wants to go to Phoenix, Arizona, and he wants to do, you know, about migrant crime. And he said that the Democratic mayor there, Katie Hobbs, has been derelict in her duty. So you can see where he's coming from and the effect he wants these videos to have. He also told me, and this is all happening now, like he's doing these videos, the one from Starr County is going to be out soon. Then he's going to go to Chicago and he wants to do sort of what are the effects of being a sanctuary city on the city budget. Now, if you read my last

story, you know that I interviewed the Denver mayor, who's the mayor of Denver, which is a sanctuary city. And he explained that it's not as easy as we comply. We don't let everybody out. We're not just letting criminals roam the street. They comply in certain instances when there's a violent criminal. And in other instances, the thing is that in Denver, for example, they don't ask what your immigration status is. And so that's why they don't comply completely with all of the ICE stuff because they don't know if somebody in their detention is here illegally or not, because they don't ask that question. But he's going to go to Chicago and he's going to talk about how bad sanctuary cities are. So this is really interesting because they're doing the propaganda. This follows what they're doing here.

And to me, I was curious, you know, are Democrat, what are Democrats doing? What I found is they're basically scrambling to keep up. I reached out to Colin Ruggiero. Now, he's been a TV producer. He works in media. He was actually a media consultant for Kamala Harris' presidential campaign and for Ruben Gallego's successful Senate campaign in Arizona. When I called him up and I said, hey, here's what this MAGA guy is doing, he said under his breath, damn it. He told me that's

because he's pitching a remarkably similar, obviously on the left version, of a docu-series to liberal donors and large philanthropies and things like that on the left version of sort of a docu-series to liberal donors and large philanthropies and things like that on the progressive side to tell the Democratic side, to tell the story of that who Trump is targeting is not just sort of these hardened criminals that they trot out for videos. You're also targeting business owners. You're also able to now go into churches and schools to get people. I wrote a story last week about how schools administrators are terrified about the prospect of ICE showing up at their school and how it's going to terrify children and not just children who are maybe citizens and their parents are here illegally or what, but also

American kids, right? U.S. citizens in schools. And so ultimately what this is about is Democrats want to tell their story. They want to say what's true about what Trump is doing. And just to say that it's radical and wrong, you know, I think that in these situations we have to, yes, certainly Americans knew that they wanted to tighten the border and people like to say, you know, Democrats voted for this stuff. Americans voted for this stuff.

On the other hand, you have something like birthright citizenship, which a federal judge today put an indefinite hold on. And that's part of the Constitution, as I've said before. So this is my favorite line. You can't just edit the Constitution like it's a Wikipedia page. And so that is something you're going, by going after birthright citizenship, you're going after American babies, U., US citizen children, right? And so that's a huge part of what's going on now. And, you know, it's sort of at the end, I talked to a democratic strategist,

who I really respect on the desk, I mean, it's been around a long time. And he talked about the Democrats, you know, beyond, it's not just about movies or docu-series and things like that. Across multimedia, you need to reach voters. You need to reach Americans and tell them your side. And if what's going on now is objectionable, and MAGA certainly believes, and Republicans certainly believe that it's important to put this gloss and to show how patriotic and how we're under invasion, then Democrats have to give that other side. And so I think it's a fascinating story to keep watching. I will stay on top of it. I really appreciate you guys watching. And I just want to say, please subscribe to huddled masses,

subscribe to the bullwork. We're going to keep doing this great work, keeping the administration accountable and talking about the truth of what's going on. So I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much.