Tangle - Trump's mass deportation plan

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

In the week after the election, President-elect Donald Trump reaffirmed his campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants living in the United States illegally. He has also started identifying high-ranking immigration officials to carry out the policy.Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.We are hiring!In the last month or so, the rapid growth of our readership has accelerated a planned expansion of our team. We are hiring for two positions:1) Customer service lead. We are looking for a highly organized, dedicated professional to help us provide the best possible service to our readers and listeners that we can. This is a crucial role to fill, and we'll be hiring as soon as possible. Job listing here.2) Assistant to the editor. We are also looking for a highly organized individual dedicated to Tangle's mission who has a passion for multimedia and politics. This person will be working directly with Tangle's executive editor Isaac Saul out of Tangle HQ in Philadelphia, with a start date in February-March. Job listing here.Check out Episode 8 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment!Take the survey: What do you think of a future deportation effort in Trump’s next term? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a FIZ member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month, every month. At FIZ, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at fiz.ca. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work, and many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive.

Visit Canada.ca slash right here to connect with one near you today. A message from the Government of Canada. From executive producer Isaac Saul welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Donald Trump's purported mass deportation plan, what exactly we know about it and what might come of it looking ahead.

Before we jump into that, I have two quick announcements. First of all, and this one is pretty fun, we're hiring. We have experienced some very rapid growth and in the last couple of weeks have basically hit some of our goals that we had for 2025. And we need to staff up to handle that. So we have two openings that just popped up. The first one is a customer service lead. This is going to start as kind of a halftime role.

We're looking for a highly organized, dedicated professional to help us provide the best possible service to our readers and listeners that we can. This is a really crucial role to fill for us and we're going to be hiring it as soon as possible. There is a job listing that is in today's episode description and in today's newsletter. Second, we're also hiring an assistant to the editor. That's me. We're looking for a very organized individual dedicated to Tangle's mission, who has a passion for multimedia and politics. This person will be working directly with me

out of our Tangle HQ right here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a start date in February or March. This is a full-time role, and there is a job listing again in today's episode description and in today's newsletter. So that's really fun. We're super excited about that. The second thing is just the quick heads up that on Friday, we have our post-mortem coming.

So since election day, we've seen a lot of these post-mortems explanations, blame game, whatever you want to call it for what happened in the 2024 election. And in Friday's members only newsletter, I'm going to be sharing mine. Keep your eyes peeled for that. A reminder, if you wanna get those newsletters, you can go to readtangle.com forward slash membership. I'm also gonna try and do a podcast version of this. It'll either come out on Friday

or it'll be part of our Sunday edition. I'm not a hundred percent sure which yet, but either way, if you want that, you need to go to tanglemedia.supercast.com. All right, with that out of the way, if you want that, you need to go to tanglemedia.supercast.com. All right with that out of the way, I'm going to pass it over to John for quick hits in today's main story and I'll be back for my take. Thank you, Isaac and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today.

First up, President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Fox News host and veteran Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. Additionally, Trump will nominate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Trump also announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOJ for short, focused on cutting government spending and streamlining bureaucracy. 2.

President-elect Trump reportedly plans to halt a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. if it goes into effect next year. A bill passed by Congress in April requires the social media app to find a new owner not based in China by January or lose access to US users. 3. Jack Teixeira, a former Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for leaking classified intelligence documents detailing US surveillance of adversaries and allies.

4. The Biden administration said it will not limit arms transfers to Israel after determining that the country was making satisfactory progress toward increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. And number five, a US jury awarded $42 million in damages to three former detainees of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, determining that they had been subject to torture and mistreatment while imprisoned. We start with this though. President elect Trump has said he will move swiftly to implement mass deportations after

he takes office. Holman was tapped to serve as border czar in Donald Trump's administration as well. The president elect has promised to begin mass deportations on day one of his second term. That promise sparking concerns from migrant families across the country and right here in central Florida. In the weeks after the election, president-elect Donald Trump reaffirmed his campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants living in the United States illegally. He also started identifying high-ranking immigration officials to carry out the policy. Trump has brought on Stephen Miller, a longtime immigration hardliner, as his deputy chief

of staff. He chose Tom Homan, a former ICE director, and the face of some of Trump's most restrictive policies for his first term as borders are. He's also chosen Governor Kristi Noem, who supported his first term's travel ban on select Muslim-majority countries to lead the Department of Homeland Security. You can see our full coverage of Trump's cabinet and staff picks with a link in today's episode description. In a Truth Social post announcing Homan's role, Trump said he would be in charge of

our nation's borders and all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin. In a Fox News interview on Monday, Homan said the deportation effort would prioritize public safety and national security threats, as well as migrants who had disobeyed court orders to leave the country. Last month, Homan told 60 Minutes that the plan would not be a mass sweep of neighborhoods or involve building concentration camps, calling such accusations ridiculous. Instead, he said the plan would amount to targeted arrests of the most dangerous criminals

in the country, noting that the country has over 1.5 million convicted criminal unauthorized migrants with final orders of removal, including thousands of gang members. Homan also defended some of Trump's most controversial policies, including family separation, which was barred by a federal judge until 2031. When asked if mass deportations could be carried out without separating families, Homan suggested families can be deported together. The scale and scope of the deportation plan is still unclear, and enacting it will present legal and logistical challenges.

The U.S. has limited detention space to house migrants who may be arrested and prepared for deportation. Immigrant rights groups have also promised to resist the administration's efforts. Juan Proano, the CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Hispanic civil rights group in the US, said his group is already raising money and hiring lawyers to fight Trump's ruthless policies. In Mexico, where more than half of all unauthorized migrants originate, immigration advocates say neither shelters nor the border are prepared to take in potentially millions of deportees, many of whom are jobless or have been out of the country for years.

Today, we're going to examine some arguments about Trump's mass deportation plan from the right and the left, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work, and many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive. Visit Canada.ca slash right here to connect with one near you today. A message from the Government of Canada. First up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right backs Trump's deportation plan, but some warn that he must be discerning in

its execution. Many say large-scale deportations are needed after record unauthorized migration during the Biden administration. Others argue the plan represents a return to the rule of law. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about Trump's mass deportation promise. In short, Mr. Trump will move to reinstate the border policies of his first term,

such as remain in Mexico, which seemed to work. Under that deal, migrants claiming asylum in the US were sent back to Mexico while their cases were pending, which might take months or more. The idea was to break the incentives to game the system. Given the backlog of asylum cases, letting migrants into the US while they wait is an enticement to come, the board said. The political rub may be Mr. Trump's campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation

operation in the history of our country. How it goes depends on what Mr. Trump means. Some of Mr. Trump's advisors, including Stephen Miller, have talked about mass deportation in sweeping terms, but enforcement priorities are up to the president, and Mr. Trump has suggested he isn't interested in illegal grandmothers, the board wrote. The public backs him on securing the border and reducing the burden that migrants have put on cities across the country. But Mr. Trump appears to realize support will ebb if the public sees crying children as

their parents are deported, or read stories of long-settled families broken up and dreamers brought here illegally as children deported to countries they no longer remember. In The Washington Examiner, Byron York made the case for mass deportations. Variations and wording aside, when Trump talks about mass deportation, he is talking about the mass deportation of criminals. It's hard to imagine opposing Trump's proposal. Who would want to help murderers and drug dealers who entered the country illegally remain in the United States?

Yet we have seen much talk that Trump's deportation plans go far, far beyond criminals and will ultimately lead to 10 million, 50 million, or perhaps even 20 million people being removed from our country," York said. The Trump plan has been visible in plain sight for quite a while. First, the new administration will seek to deport quickly those illegal immigrants who are deemed national security threats. At the same time, it will pursue illegal immigrants with criminal records, either in the U.S. or some other country. Trump's actions if he takes, could certainly be characterized as mass deportations, since

they would involve the removal of perhaps one million people. It would certainly be the largest deportation of criminals in American history. On one hand, it would not please the Trump supporters who want to deport every single person in the U.S. illegally. After all, every illegal border-crosser has violated US law by unlawfully entering the country. On the other hand, prioritized deportations would be a significant restoration of the rule of law as it applies to the US border, and that would be a very good thing. In the digital signal, Simon Hankinson criticized the mass hysteria of deportation.

For four years, Americans saw the results of the Biden administration refusing to enforce the law. From more preventable crimes to overtax schools, housing, and hospitals. They saw millions of inadmissible foreigners allowed to enter the United States despite having no visa and then stay indefinitely through quasi-legal fudges of the law. They saw inadmissible aliens being fed, housed, and paid using our tax dollars, Hankinson wrote. Because Biden left a four-year deficit on national immigration law enforcement at the border and inside the country, the Trump administration will have to catch up. There are over 1.3 million

illegal aliens with official removal deportation orders still in the U.S. They've had their due process, and now they should be removed. As our elected leaders do their jobs, and as the men and women sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution and the rule of law get back to business, expect all eyes to be on them. There will be hyperbole, spin, selective media coverage, and outright lies in much of the national media that will make the press partisanship during Trump's first term look like objectivity, Hankinson said. But don't believe the hype. The rule of law is the rock on which this republic is built. A return to that now will seem odd at first, but it is proper, long overdue, and deserving of public support.

All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left criticizes the deportation plan, with some suggesting it will lead to an economic turn down. Many say the effort is morally indefensible. Others say the plan will punish other countries for the United States' internal problems. In the New York Times, Paul Krugman argued Trump's deportations will drive up your grocery bill. With the economy starting from essentially full employment in his second term, Trump, with mass deportations, would degrade

productivity capacity, balloon deficits, and, yes, bring inflation roaring back, keeping a grim pledge on punitive immigration policy while breaking one on providing relief to American consumers, Krugman wrote. of immigration policy while breaking one on providing relief to American consumers, Krugman wrote. Here's what I mean. If you're upset about grocery prices now, see what happens if Trump goes after a huge part of the agricultural workforce. Immigrants are around three quarters

of agricultural workers, and roughly half of them are undocumented. When it comes to the downstream economic effects of deportations, it's not just about grocery prices, it's also about the cost of housing. The answer to that problem is to build more housing units. But undocumented immigrants are more than a fifth of the construction workforce, so deportations would severely hamper efforts to increase the housing supply, Krugman said.

Could we easily make up for the loss of these workers by replacing them with native-born workers? No. Employment among native-born adults in their prime working years is higher than it was at any point during Trump's first term. There just isn't a large pool of idle but employable native-born Americans to put to work. In the American Prospect, Ryan Cooper wrote,

Trump's voters are about to learn he meant what he said. Now that Donald Trump is one again, a furious debate on the left side of the political spectrum has erupted. As Democratic Party factions jostle for position of casting blame on everyone but themselves, Cooper said. A more interesting conundrum, however, is the maddening fact that Trump paid little or no electoral penalty for his numerous hideously unpopular positions.

A developing body of evidence suggests that a critical mass of voters simply did not hear about these positions or did not believe them if they did. Even if Trump only manages a tenth of what he promises, the deportations are going to be an atrocity for the record books. By way of comparison, about 12 million Germans fled or were deported out of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, and about 600,000 of them died in the process. Now, back in the US, fascist thugs, possibly deputized sheriffs and cops, will be busting into houses, dragging families out of their beds, and herding them into concentration

camps that are certain to be overcrowded, filthy, and disease-ridden. The construction and agriculture industries, where one-fifth and one-half the workforces, respectively, are undocumented, will be dealt a savage blow. In The Washington Post, Eduardo Porter said the world will foot the bill for Trump's immigration policy. On November 5, Election Day in the United States, Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum stepped before the news media to point out a drastic decline in the number of migrants arriving at the U.S. border from around the world, largely because of Mexico's efforts,

Porter wrote. It should be no surprise that she is so willing to be helpful. Donald Trump closed his campaign in North Carolina by threatening to impose tariffs on Mexican goods ranging from 25 to 100 percent until it stopped the movement of migrants. He also threatened 200 percent tariffs on Mexican-made cars, mass deportations that would push millions of migrants into Mexico, and deployment of the military south of the border to combat drug cartels. To a foreign observer, America's quest for redress around the world is hard to understand. The United States is not only the most prosperous nation on Earth, but it is also pulling farther ahead of its peers, growing faster than other affluent

economies. What ultimately motivates Trump's voters is that the United States has done a dismal job of distributing the gains from these global wins, Porter said. That's not other countries' fault, however. That's the fault of a political system unwilling to address the social downsides of the many changes, whether technological, economic, or demographic, that modernity has brought about. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for it with the left and the right are saying which brings us to my take. Whenever a new president is elected, you're gonna hear a lot about policy mandates.

Looking at this election, I actually don't necessarily buy that Trump has a total mandate or one any greater than the last few presidents have had. Yes, Republicans won the Senate and they will win the House narrowly, but Trump is also on pace to have a thinner popular vote victory than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. And if Republicans are honest with themselves, they know that their margins are not as vast

as they're claiming publicly. If they want to hold on to the House in 2026 and the White House and Senate in 2028, I don't suspect they will legislate as if they are politically invincible. That being said, I do think Trump has a mandate on immigration. It is inarguable to me that the Trump administration's version of immigration policy is the one that the vast majority of Americans prefer. It is the bedrock his political career has been built on since 2016. Trump flip-flops on, speaks squishily about, or all-out avoids a lot of issues, but he has never wavered on immigration.

So I fully expect him to pursue a broad deportation effort. I also expect him to reimplement his border policies. Trump will want to posture in a way to discourage migrants from even coming here. pursue a broad deportation effort. I also expect him to reimplement his border policies. Trump will want to posture in a way to discourage migrants from even coming here. His very presence in the White House is going to act as a deterrent and we're already seeing the impact.

I think as the leader of the executive branch with the Senate, House and American public at his back, he does have the mandate to pursue immigration policies in full. That doesn't mean he can violate the law, but it does mean his administration will enact stricter immigration policies that will. That doesn't mean he can violate the law, but it does mean his administration will enact stricter immigration policies that will be supported by the public.

I've already explained why I don't fear the quote unquote collapse of democracy under Trump. Similarly, I also can't help but scoff when reading writers like Ryan Cooper under what the left is saying, invoke post-World War II Germany and atrocities for the record books, fascist thugs, and concentration

camps while discussing a plan to deport unauthorized migrants with violent criminal records. Might law enforcement use unnecessary force to arrest unauthorized migrants with violent criminal records? Almost definitely. Do I expect these deportations to require routine violence, police-involved shootings, or deaths? No. Maybe I'll eat my words on that, but we could at least save the Holocaust comparison.

And yet, I do fear this deportation plan more than most of Trump's other policies. Not because I think it's unjust or immoral. If you are here illegally and committing violent crimes or disobeying deportation orders, then your arrest or deportation actually seems just and moral. I don't think it should be controversial to pursue a functioning immigration system by enforcing the law. I fear the plan because I'm still not clear on exactly what it will look like, because Trump's campaign rhetoric is often different from his president-elect rhetoric.

Byron York, under what the right is saying, said that 15-20 million people won't be deported under this policy, yet that's exactly what Donald Trump promised while campaigning. During Trump's first term, and before I started Tangle, I reported on faith leaders across the country who were hiding migrants in their places of worship to avoid arrests and deportation. I imagine this kind of resistance will manifest again, and if Trump really attempts a zero tolerance policy, we are likely to get some very ugly scenes. This, of course, is to say nothing of the fact that if Trump's deportation effort begins to target migrants who are here illegally but are not breaking any other laws and are part of the labor force, business leaders will start to complain.

Then we'll see local economies impacted. And depending on how sweeping the order is, we might see larger scale economic impacts too. These are my fears, but they are largely dependent on the scale of what the Trump administration actually does. On the other hand, Trump's second term poses yet another gigantic opportunity for Congress to actually fix our immigration system for the long term. Trump's deportation plan, if targeted and organized, could be a part of the short term fix and return a sense of order to the country while also giving Republicans a big win on the issue to take to any negotiating table.

Then, for a long-term fix, my solutions to the border crisis remain in play. We need to tighten the asylum process. Biden has already started this and it's worked. We need more border security. Trump will probably do this. And then we need to implement verification for employers, rein in parole, offer a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, increase the number of legal work permits, and massively scale up the number of judges, lawyers, and asylum officers at the border so we can clear the backlog of millions of asylum cases by actually adjudicating their claims and then admitting or deporting them accordingly. Democrats were willing to play ball on parts of this plan when Biden was president, but Trump directed Republicans to block his attempts to ensure Biden didn't get a late term victory.

Now, as the minority party, Democrats should still be willing to come to the table, and Republicans should end the campaign season charade and find some common ground while they have both leverage and a mandate from the American people. There's a lot of work to get done outside of deporting millions of people or building walls and the sooner we get there the better. We'll be right back after this quick break. As a Fizz member you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month, every month. At FIZ, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply.

Details at FIZ.ca. Are you sure you parked over here? Do you see it anywhere? I think it's back this way. Come on. Hey, you're going the wrong way. Feeling distracted? You're not alone.

Whether renting, considering buying a home, or renewing a mortgage, many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, and clear your head, visit Canada.ca slash It Pays to Know. A message from the government of Canada. ["The Daily Show"] ["The Daily Show"] All right, that is it for my take,

which brings us to your questions answered. This one is related to immigration, it's from John in Solver Spring, Maryland. John said, you rather neutrally described Homan with words, he remains a proponent of family separation without describing this policy as a human rights violation. What is Tangles policy for providing context to readers when a proposed policy is a violation of the Geneva Conventions and or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? So first of all, yes, we have a policy of using neutral labels for controversial ideas

to try to keep as many readers as possible from having a knee-jerk response to our topics before they get a chance to engage with different ideas. To be clear, if a controversial event results in a definitive legal outcome, like Roe v. Wade being overturned or Donald Trump being convicted on felony charges, we will describe those outcomes definitively. However, the policy of separating migrant families when their parents have crossed the border illegally has not been definitively and legally described as a human rights violation by the United Nations. Plenty of articles have argued that this policy should be called a human rights violation.

Amnesty International has argued the policy resulted in human rights violations. The group Children's Rights has argued that the policy was a violation of the UN's international covenant on civil and political rights. And both the American Bar Association, as well as the Columbia Human Rights Law Review have called the policy illegal under US law.

Those arguments are pretty convincing. And we would say that family separations at the border constituted a violation of those children's rights. Furthermore, a federal judge did prohibit the policy for eight years, but he fell short of labeling it outright illegal. Therefore, we cannot accurately give this policy

a black and white label as either illegal or as a human rights violation. And in context, in an article where we were describing Trump's various chosen appointees for his upcoming term, we only have the space to accurately label the policy before moving on. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm gonna send this back to John

for the rest of the podcast. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Don't forget to check out those jobs or pass them along to people who might be interested that are in our episode description and newsletter today. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks. On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced that oil and natural gas companies will pay

a federal fee if they emit methane above prescribed limits. The Environmental Protection Agency rules says that excess methane produced in 2024 could result in a fee of $900 per ton, with fees rising to $1,200 per ton in 2025 and $1,500 per ton by 2026. Methane, which is a more powerful, although more short-lived, greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is responsible for about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, with the oil and natural gas sector being the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the United States. The EPA says the rule is designed to encourage early development of available technologies

to reduce methane emissions and other harmful air pollutants. However, the rule will not go into effect until early 2025, and President-elect Trump could reverse course as part of a planned deregulatory agenda when he takes office. The Associated Press has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of US adults who say they favor the US government starting a new national program to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally is 62 percent, according to a June 2024 CBS News poll. The percentage of U.S. adults who would favor local law enforcement trying to identify which people were U.S. citizens and which were undocumented immigrants as part of a national

deportation program is 62 percent. The percentage of Harris supporters who favor mass deportations is 27%, according to a September 2024 Pew Research poll. The percentage of Trump supporters who favor mass deportations is 88%. The percentage of US Hispanics who say increasing deportations of people who are in the country illegally would help the border situation is 33%,

according to a March 2024 Pew Research poll. The percentage of other U.S. adults who say increasing deportations would help the border situation is 55%. The percentage of hired crop farm workers in the U.S. who held no work authorization between 2018 and 2020 is 41%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the percentage of hired crop farm workers in the U.S. who held no work authorization between 1989 and 1991 was 14%. Alright, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story.

In the 1960s, India's Green Revolution favored farming rice and wheat, crops with high yields. However, monocropping requiring frequent use of pesticides and fertilizers caused biodiversity in the nation to suffer. But the reintroduction of milleds to India's agriculture could help. Milleds are energy and water efficient, which could save India 50 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions

and 300 billion cubic meters of water each year. This, combined with their incredible health benefits, makes their recultivation an exciting prospect. Reasons to be Cheerful has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and sign up for a membership.

You can also go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up for a premium podcast membership, which will get you ad-free daily podcasts, Friday podcasts, Sunday podcasts, interviews, and so much more. We'll be right back here tomorrow for Isaac and the rest of the crew. This is John Law signing off.

Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by Dink Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will K. Back, David Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bukova, who is also our social media manager.

The music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website at readtangle.com. That's readtangle.com.