Later this month, the man who promised to be “a dictator on Day 1” will take the presidential oath of office for the second time.
He’s likely spent much of his time during the two month-plus transition period since the Nov. 5 election drafting executive orders and other measures to act immediately on that promise.
About the least surprising order will likely be one declaring a national state of emergency on immigration. Trump has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, with about one-third of the nation’s 11 million now living in California.
What realities might this produce? For one thing, don’t expect open conflicts between federal and local authorities, even though Los Angeles and other cities here have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for immigrants lacking legal status.
No, most police won’t cooperate with the Border Patrol and whatever other federal agents Trump may press into service to help enforce a wide-ranging deportation order. He promised he would start by going after criminals who snuck into this country, but that doesn’t mean he won’t target anyone else, including hard-working field hands, restaurant dishwashers, roofers, car wash workers, hotel cleaners and others in jobs most Americans don’t want.
Even as he deploys thousands of federal agents, Trump divulged soon after his election, he plans to use the military to roust many immigrants from their quarters.
So, yes, there’s a strong possibility of seeing troops and military hardware in city streets or cruising along in freeway convoys.
This would be unprecedented since the Civil War, when federal troops occupied almost the entire Confederacy, whose states voted almost unanimously for Trump in 2024 (Virginia was a narrow exception).
Will Americans be docile bystanders when individuals and families they have come to know – without realizing some were here illegally – are taken away, many being sent to countries they have never known as sentient adults? Or will they shelter people who have cleaned their homes and mowed their lawns for decades?
These are open questions. To preclude some conflicts, Trump adviser Stephen Miller (a Santa Monica High School graduate) sent warning letters to hundreds of state and local officials here warning them of possible prosecution if they don’t keep hands off deportation efforts. These went both to political unknowns and to prominent figures like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who pronounced the letters a mere “scare tactic.”
It’s unquestionable that mass deportations like Trump promises will cost many American jobs. Thousands of businesses sell supplies from lumber to furniture polish for use by businesses employing the undocumented. If those workers disappear, so will the jobs of many who supply them.
This happened in previous roundups during the 1920s, 1960s and the years between 2006 and 2009, when the George W. Bush administration conducted numerous raids.
Yes, there will be lawsuits from outfits like the American Civil Liberties Union to get Trump’s declaration of emergency cancelled. With the ultimate decision up to the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, bet on such a Trump order surviving.
Plus, Congress has never so much as voted on cancelling a presidential emergency declaration, not even Franklin Roosevelt’s order that started the roundup and imprisonment of almost all Japanese-Americans just after Pearl Harbor.
Trump, of course, has deported immigrants before – about 1.5 million during his first four-year term. Right now, about that many immigrants await hearings on asylum cases around the nation, and those persons are not supposed to be touched until and unless their applications are rejected.
Then there are the twin facts that there is no registry of immigrant addresses and that no one knows whether federal troops would need search warrants to look in places they may want to check out.
Trump’s so-called “immigration czar,” Tom Homan, has said he will first go after anyone here who has been given final removal orders by immigration judges. In 2023, federal agents deported more than 140,000 such persons.
Going after others like them could make Trump’s effort seem effective, even if it’s not really removing any more targeted folks than soon-to-be ex-President Biden ever did.
Which makes this all far more complex than campaign rhetoric ever implied.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.