WASHINGTON (AP) — “Mass Deportation Now!” read signs at the Republican National Convention, fully embracing Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in U.S. history.
Some Republicans aren’t ready for that yet.
Lauren B. Peña, a Republican activist from Texas, said she was uneasy hearing Trump’s calls for mass deportations and terms like “illegals” and “invasion” used at the convention. Like some Republicans in Congress who have proposed a balanced approach to immigration, she hopes Trump is just bluffing.
“He doesn’t want to deport every family that crosses the border, he wants to deport the criminals and sex offenders,” Peña said.
But Trump and his advisers have other plans. He is making immigration central to his campaign to retake the White House, pushing the Republican Party toward a belligerent strategy that harks back to the 1950s, when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched a deportation policy known as a racial slur: “Operation Wetback.”
When pressed for details about his plan in an interview with Time magazine this year, Trump suggested he would deploy the National Guard and possibly even the military to target between 15 million and 20 million people. However, the government estimates that 11 million migrants without permanent legal authorization will be living in the U.S. in 2022.
His plans have raised the stakes of this year’s election from fortifying the southern border, a longtime priority of conservatives, to the question of whether America needs to fundamentally change its approach to immigration.
After the Biden administration saw historic numbers of border crossings at the southern border, Democrats have shifted to the right on this issue as well, often starting with promises about border security before talking about aid for immigrants already in the country.
And now, as the November election approaches, both parties are reaching out to voters like Peña, 33. Latino voters could play a decisive role in many swing states.
Trump won 35% of Hispanic voters in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, and support for tougher border enforcement has grown among Hispanic voters. But an AP analysis of two consecutive polls conducted in June by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about half of Hispanic Americans have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Trump.
Yet Peña, a self-described multiracial Hispanic, has become an eager new recruit for the GOP. She was drawn to Trump after seeing people debilitated by drugs in the public housing complex where she lives in Austin. She believes government programs have failed low-income people and that the recent wave of immigration has created a bottleneck in public assistance like food stamps.
However, Peña also says she is concerned when her fellow Republicans discuss ideas like banning children who don’t have permanent legal status from public education.
“As a Hispanic, it’s a tough subject,” she said. “I think we need to give these people a chance.”
Still, GOP lawmakers have largely embraced Trump’s plans. “It’s necessary,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a July interview at the conservative Hudson Institute.
However, some have shown tacit skepticism by proposing more modest goals.
Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, pointed to more than 1 million people who have already received a final deportation order from an immigration judge, saying, “There’s a difference between those who are in the process now and those who are done with the process.”
Lankford, who negotiated a bipartisan border package that helped defeat Trump earlier this year, added that it would be a “huge” task, both logistically and financially, to target that group alone.
Other Republicans, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mario Diaz Balart, suggested that Trump in the White House prioritize immigrants with criminal records.
Trump took office in 2016 with similar promises of mass deportations, but has only managed to deport about 1.5 million people.
But this time there is a plan.
Trump has been working closely with Stephen Miller, a former top adviser who is expected to take a top role in the White House if Trump wins. Miller describes a Trump administration that will work with “utter determination” to achieve two goals: “Close the border. Deport all illegals.”
To do that, Trump would revive travel bans from countries deemed undesirable, such as Muslim-majority nations. He would launch a sweeping operation, giving the National Guard the power to round up immigrants, hold them in massive camps and put them on deportation flights before they could file legal challenges.
In addition, Trump has pledged to end birthright citizenship, a right that has existed in the U.S. for 125 years. And several of his top advisers have developed a far-reaching policy vision through the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which aims to crack down on other forms of legal immigration.
The Trump administration could also use the plans to temporarily end programs for more than 1 million migrants, including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Ukrainians and Afghans who fled recent conflicts, and others granted temporary protection because of unrest in their home countries.
The policy would have far-reaching implications for key sectors such as housing and agriculture, including in key states.
“If the more than 75,000 immigrant workers who do the hardest work in Wisconsin’s dairy and agriculture sectors were gone tomorrow, the state’s economy would collapse,” said Jorge Franco, CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican who has pushed legislation that would allow a path to citizenship for long-term residents, argued that large-scale deportations were necessary now because of the recent increase in border crossings under President Joe BidenBut she also hoped Trump would see the difference between recent arrivals and longtime residents.
“There’s a group of congressmen who are going to make sure the new administration understands, because there’s another aspect: the business community,” she said. “The developers in construction … and the farmers, what are they going to say? They need hands.”
Meanwhile, Democrats believe Trump’s threats are now motivating Latino voters as well.
“The mass deportation has put many people on high alert,” said María Teresa Kumar, CEO of Voto Latino, a leading voter registration organization that supports Democrat Kamala Harris.
Like many other groups aligned with Harris, Voto Latino has seen a surge in interest since she topped the Democratic ticket. Kumar said the organization has registered nearly 36,000 voters in the weeks since Biden left the race — nearly as many as it did in the first six months of the year.
In a Latino-majority House district on the southern tip of Texas, Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez said voters want to see better border management, but many also have friends or family members who do not have their immigration documentation in order.
“There’s a lot more that could be done, in terms of good policy, that would help manage the flow at the border,” Gonzalez said. “But mass deportations, that just gives people heartburn.”
