What Would Mass Deportation In The U.S. Look Like?

By Ana Raquel Minian, Dissent

In 2016, Donald Trump’s signature campaign promise was to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. During the current election cycle, Trump has escalated his xenophobic rhetoric and pledged to deport tens of millions of migrants already in the United States if elected to a second term. At an event in Iowa in 2023, he cited a historical precedent for his plan: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

The history of the “Eisenhower model” should give pause to anyone who values the rule of law or human rights. In the early 1950s, U.S. officials became alarmed by a sharp rise in unauthorized border crossings from Mexico. They accused migrants of committing crimes, taking jobs away from citizens, engaging in drug trafficking, and spreading disease. The Border Patrol claimed that this problem could be solved if the government allowed the military and National Guard to help the agency seal the southern border. This suggested fix, however, overlooked an 1878 law known as Posse Comitatus, which prohibits the government from using the military to enforce domestic policies unless such use is approved by Congress. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s former West Point classmate Lieutenant General Joseph M. Swing insisted that the administration disregard the law, but Eisenhower refused.

ice officials stand by to deport migrants

Trump has shown no such reluctance. In an interview with Time earlier this year, he claimed that he would carry out his plan with the help of the National Guard, along with other branches of the military if “things were getting out of control.”

While Eisenhower rejected the use of the army on U.S. soil, he appointed Swing as commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1954. Almost immediately, Swing launched Operation Wetback, a harsh paramilitary campaign to expel Mexicans whose name invoked a derogatory slur for migrants who cross the Rio Grande. The Immigration Service marshalled approximately 750 immigration officers; seven airplanes; and 300 jeeps, cars, and buses to round up migrants. Within three months, historian Mae Ngai notes, the service had apprehended approximately 170,000 people. Given the sheer number of those captured, the government lacked the resources to deport all of them immediately. Instead, it erected temporary detention facilities to hold them while they awaited expulsion.

During his presidential administration, Trump took a similar action by building sprawling camps to detain apprehended individuals before deportation—a measure he plans to expand if reelected. One such facility, which opened in Tornillo, Texas in 2018, housed thousands of minors in tents. While many noted the inhumane conditions at these sites as well as the cruelty of the family separation policy, mistreatment in detention facilities was not unique to the Trump administration. As I show in my new book, In the Shadow of Liberty, abuse and dehumanization have occurred no matter when, how, or why immigrant detention was used—they are intrinsic to the system. In fact, immigrant detention facilities were originally conceived as spaces where the Constitution did not apply.