Does Trump want both mass deportation and remigration?

Sep 26, 2024
Donald_Trump. Image: Wikimedia Commons / Source / Attribution / Gage Skidmore / ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Donald Trump’s desire for a mass deportation program for about 11 million undocumented migrants in the US (he says the number is much bigger) is well known. According to some polling, around 54% of US citizens support such a program even if they have no idea how it would be implemented, how it may affect them or what it would cost. Less well known is Trump’s denaturalisation or “remigration” program.

Denaturalisation and remigration

In February 2020, the former Trump Administration created a Denaturalisation Section in the Department of Justice (most likely at the behest of Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller). The stated role of the Section was “to bring justice to terrorists, war criminals, sex offenders, and other fraudsters who illegally obtained naturalisation”. Denaturalisation cases require the government to show that a defendant’s naturalisation was “illegally procured” or “procured by concealment of a material fact or by wilful misrepresentation…”  8 U.S.C. § 1451.

The number of “denaturalisation” cases is a few dozen over the last decade.

But Trump may want to take things much further.

In a Twitter post on 25 September, he said that he would “return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration)”. Trump’s specific use of the term “remigration” is unlikely to have been an accident. It’s not a well-known term.

Stephen Miller re-posted this adding in capital letters “THE TRUMP PLAN TO END THE INVASION OF SMALL TOWN AMERICA: REMIGRATION!”

The term “remigration” is popular among far-right nationalists as “returning immigrants to their native lands”. It is not just the deportation of undocumented migrants, but the forcible return of non-ethnically European immigrants and their families, regardless of citizenship. It is the far right’s solution to the “great replacement” theory pushed by many US politicians, including J.D. Vance.

The term is also popular in parts of Europe.

Herbert Kickl, the leader of the Austrian far-right party, advocated for a “remigration commissioner”. He urged “remigration” while advocating for “homogeneity” in Austria, rather than diversity. He has also said that remigration could be used to revoke the citizenship of non-whites who “refuse to integrate”.

Would a second Trump administration pursue such a policy?

Trump’s attacks on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who have legal immigration status and are working legally, suggests remigration is not outside the range of Trump’s thinking – perhaps the “concepts of a plan”. Miller may well be behind Trump’s use of the word even if Trump doesn’t know what it means or the implications.

Extending Trump’s plan for mass deportation of undocumented migrants to include “remigration” would make two aspects of mass deportation simpler.

Deportation involves three main steps:

  • Location of people in the cohort that is the target of deportation;
  • Detention while outstanding identity, legal and other issues are resolved; and
  • Negotiation with receiving nations to enable the deportation to be effected.

If a second Trump Administration can pass legislation that makes “remigration” legal (essentially stripping certain people of their citizenship or visa status by operation of law with no appeal rights) and assuming there are no Constitutional issues with such legislation (a friendly Supreme Court may help), that would make the process of locating the people to be deported simpler. Essentially, anyone who doesn’t look sufficiently European could be rounded up by the National Guard and other arms of the US military without having to worry about pesky things like visa or citizenship status.

Second and third generation migrants would get swept up in this. Huge mistakes would be made depending on how the legislation is drafted (e.g. would someone of mixed ethnicity be included? what about Black and Hispanic Americans whose families have been living in the US for centuries?).

This was in some ways how Operation Wetback in the 1950s operated. Essentially, anyone who looked Mexican was targeted. Large numbers of American citizens were deported by mistake because they looked Mexican. Trump has often mentioned Operation Wetback as something he would like to replicate. He probably doesn’t care about the mistakes.

“Remigration” would make the target population much, much bigger. The task would take up most of an unwilling US military and police forces, including the job of running huge detention centres (each holding hundreds of thousands of people) while endless negotiations took place with almost every non-European country.

The whole thing would be a complete, nonsensical farce with community protests across the nation overwhelming the government even before such laws could be passed. That’s assuming there are enough people in the US Congress and Senate prepared to resist Trump.

The risk for Australia is that Trump’s rhetoric creates space for Peter Dutton and others on the far right of Australian politics to push for similar policies. There have already been suggestions that asylum seekers fleeing Gaza should only be provided with temporary protection so that they can be returned “when the war ends and it is safe to do so”.

While Australia has used temporary visas for boat arrivals, and also used temporary visas for Kosovar refugees brought to Australia in the late 1990s, we have never before used temporary visas for onshore asylum seekers who arrived on valid visas and are found to be owed protection.

Will Dutton want to take this further given the Trump rhetoric?

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