"Absolutely Insane": Pentagon Officials on Trump's Military Deportation Plan
"Absolutely Insane": Pentagon Officials on Trump's Military Deportation Plan
Trump campaigned on mass deportations. Now he’s threatening to use the U.S. military to carry them out.
The Pentagon was publicly dismissive of Trump’s pledge to employ the military to conduct mass deportations. “The Department does not comment on hypotheticals or speculate on what may occur,” a Defense Department spokesperson told The Intercept.
There are an estimated 13 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. A onetime mass deportation operation would cost at least $315 billion, according to a recent analysis from the American Immigration Council. A longer-term project involving arrests, processing, and deportations would cost around $968 billion over more than 10 years. The report emphasizes that this is a “highly conservative” estimate. It does not take into account the likelihood that this deportation operation of 13 million people would require the construction and staffing of detention facilities on a scale that dwarfs the current U.S. prison system, which held 1.9 million people all told in 2022 — let alone the effect of removing an estimated 5 percent of the American workforce from the country, who collectively pay over $105 billion in taxes each year.
In 2023, Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, indicated that military funding would be used to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants awaiting deportations. Throughout the presidential race, Trump also vowed to mobilize the National Guard to assist with his planned expulsions. Experts say that military involvement in any deportation plan would mark a fundamental shift for the armed forces, which do not normally conduct domestic law enforcement operations.
Trump has also said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to expel suspected members of drug cartels without due process. That archaic law allows for summary deportation of people from countries with which the U.S. is at war, that have invaded the United States, or have committed “predatory incursions.”
Here's how it's going to go:
- Pentagon will put up enormous resistance because of cost and impractically.
- Pentagon officials will be fired left and right because, "they can't get stuff done."
- Eventually enough competent people will be replaced with loyalists then they'll actually start kidnapping immigrants and placing them in facilities that were never meant for large amounts of people.
- American citizens that look like the conservative enemy of the day will be kidnapped along with legal and illegal immigrants.
- The US government will get sued over and over again for fucking up basic shit like "accidentally" kidnapping Black/Asian/Latino Americans and even simpler things like keeping people fed (because the Trump administration doesn't care about competency; only loyalty; or these people, for that matter).
- Countries will refuse to accept the sheer number of people (same exact problem Hitler had!) leading the Trump administration trying to come up with "solutions".
- They'll force the kidnapped people to do traditional prison work. Except there's not enough demand for that many license plates so they'll switch to literally selling their labor, allowing Trump's personal circle of rich friends to profit at their expense.
- Due to unbelievable levels of sheer incompetentcy that won't work out so near the end of Trump's term--when he's panicking about having to face justice again--he'll attempt to implement a more, "final solution."
At what point do the sane people left in the military start following their oaths and start taking those assholes out? Seeing the government drag away innocent citizens should be a clear trigger for action.
Never. There's no space in their oath for fragging their commander in response to a legal order.
At the highest level, doing so is a military coup, and directly opposed to their oath.Rounding up innocent Americans and putting them in camps isn't unconstitutional if you pass a law saying you can do it. Just ask the Japanese citizens of the country of the military stood up for them, or if they just accepted their legal orders.
Relying on the military, the violent arm of the state, to protect us from the civilian arm of the state is at best not going to happen. More likely it's so much worse if they do, because they typically don't turn control over to someone better, if they do at all.
I really admire your optimism.
The officer corps will stand up. Which is exactly why they're plotting to court martial "treasonous" officers over the Afghanistan pullout. You know, the event Trump started and Biden finished? The events ordered by both Commanders in Chief?
The enlisted men will, mostly, do as they're told.
You forgot the part where all the competent military personnel have OTHER jobs to do that they can’t do once they’re fired, so the entire US military goes to shit and Trump says to Putin, “What now, daddy?”
Here's how it's going to go:
- Pentagon will put up enormous resistance because of cost and impractically.
- Pentagon officials will be fired left and right because, "they can't get stuff done."
And then Russia will have succeeded disabling US military, didn't even need to fight
Damn as a brown person and legal citizen I can't wait to get mistakenly deported.
For your convenience, Be sure to carry your papers with you at all times, "citizen".
Except there’s not enough demand for that many license plates so they’ll switch to literally selling their labor
The college I work at use to have prison labor. Then the roads department ran out of people willing to have streets, so we lost them to road paving. With 3% unemployment, there is incredible demand for prison labor. And this is under Biden, though I don't expect 3% to hold long after Trump gets in.
A trillion dollars.
Is a 'highly conservative estimate.'
...
From the people who notoriously underestimate costs and failed every audit in my lifetime.
Faaaantastic.
Keep in mind that it also costs another trillion in lost taxes over 10 years. But the underbrained white male magaheads will be happy to shoulder that cost. It's for the country, guys!
I read your comment and fell asleep, so here's my add on to that:
If Trump does a 20% across the board import tariff, and deports 10 million people, most of whom work...
The economy, the GDP contracts by 8.9%, or about 2.5 trillion dollars in year one.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-economic-depression-msnbc/
It also starts a massive trade war.
This basically causes Great Depression 2.0.
It truly is the 1930s again.
I guess they'll be cool with all the economic fallout and will properly ascribe blame for who is actually responsible, too, just like they properly ascribed groceries costing a quadrillion times more on corporate price gouging and not "Bidenflation"....oh wait.
Staging centers in which immigrants would be concentrated.
There's probably a word for that.
They used unmarked vans in Richmond, VA, too
That's a reminder to shoot back.
"I see guys in camo," O'Shea said. "Four or five of them pop out, open the door and it was just like, 'Oh s***. I don't know who you are or what you want with us.'"
FFS, if unidentified, armed men in paramilitary gear snatch you off the street and your reaction is, "GOSH! What's happening?! Please don't hurt me!", that's on you, especially after the events of the past 8-years. SHOOT THEM!
"But I might get in trouble! I might get killed!"
Yes, you might get killed. And you might be on a fucking train to a concentration camp. FFS, they're already plotting how to set them up and Steve Bannon is saying, in front of god and everyone, that they'll need citizen militias to round up illegals.
Jesus Christ libs, pull your head out of your ass instead of crying for more racist gun control.
Apparently the "woke" crowd is actually asleep.
Experts say that military involvement in any deportation plan would mark a fundamental shift for the armed forces, which do not normally conduct domestic law enforcement operations.
What a quaint way of saying "Trump is ending Posse Comitatus"
This is all good for Putin.
We'll be at each others' throats because a game show host was enticing for a lot of dipshits who were made outraged over complete bullshit (omg, I had to wear a mask during a fucking pandemic and was encouraged to get vaccinated! The nerve of Big Government! Huff! Puff!) and a lot of our military will be distracted and depleted on using it to destroy our economy while terrorizing much of the country.
This is all going perfectly as far as our enemies are concerned.
The report emphasizes this is a "highly conservative" estimate
half a chuckle
.....where is the "Absolutely insane" quote in the article?
6th paragraph
Behind the scenes, officials were exasperated. “It’s absolutely insane,” said one Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press on the matter. “I never thought I’d see the day when this was a ‘serious’ — put that in scare quotes — policy.” He said that the legal and logistical hurdles would be immense, and the proposal was “unrealistic and unserious.”
SIXTH PARAGRAPH?! They might as well have not included it in the article! Who reads SIX paragraphs?!?
One. Two, TOPS! In a perfect world the headlines would just be followed by pictures and no words because words are booorrrrinnnngg