Trump spends first week building a framework for his mass deportations vow
President Donald Trump is closing out the week with military troops on the border, empowered immigration officers kicking off arrests and raids, and more immigrants at risk of deportation as part of his follow through on his mass deportation promise.
President Donald Trump is closing out the week with troops on the border, immigration officers launching raids and more immigrants at risk of deportation.
Trump promised voters his first day in office would see mass deportations bigger than any in American history. While things didn’t happen that quickly, he set in motion efforts to follow through on his pledge.
The result has been heightened fear in immigrant communities, cheers from supporters, announcements from city and state officials staking out the roles they will play in assisting — or not — with immigration enforcement, and multifront legal fights over Trump’s actions and executive orders.
Members of the Mexican Navy build a temporary shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, on Jan. 22 to prepare for possible mass deportations from the U.S.Daniel Becerril / REUTERSThe week started with Trump rescinding the executive orders that President Joe Biden enacted on immigration, including those that built legal pathways for record numbers of migrants arriving at the border in recent years. Trump also signed a slew of his own, most prominently declaring an emergency on the U.S. southern border and seeking to stop children born in the U.S. to some immigrants from gaining automatic American citizenship, the latter of which a federal judge temporarily blocked.
On Thursday, some of the 1,500 Army and Marines personnel the Department of Defense announced would be sent to the southwest border arrived in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego. On Friday, two massive C-17 military cargo planes shuttled people who migrated from Guatemala out of the country. ICE was also making a show of force with arrests around the country, most visibly workplace raids in Newark, New Jersey, which included the questioning and detaining of U.S. citizens.
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