Understanding How Trump Is Building His Mass Deportation Machine—So We Can Halt It

“Flights to Guantánamo Bay have begun. The worst of the worst have no place in our homeland.”

With those words the U.S. government announced the fate awaiting “criminal aliens” in its custody.

On a military base in El Paso, Texas, masked men in combat fatigues paraded a group of young Venezuelan immigrants, their hands cuffed and their ankles shackled, in front of the cameras, before loading them onto a waiting Air Force C-17, which was to deliver its human cargo to Naval Station Guantánamo Bay overnight.

This is the fate envisioned by the architects of the deportation machine for America’s “tired,” its “poor,” its “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Once there, they were to be incarcerated in the infamous Camp 6, held incommunicado in the same cells where al Qaeda suspects were once held in indefinite detention, and guarded by the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. Meanwhile, a tent city, which could ultimately house as many as 30,000 detainees, rises around the prison.

Though most of those immigrants have since been returned to Venezuela, the Pentagon has pledged to continue using the base for the “temporary detention of illegal aliens who are pending return.”

Back on the mainland, the Department of Defense (DOD) is deploying thousands of troops to “seal the borders”; the Department of Justice (DOJ) is deputizing its agents to round up undocumented immigrants; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is mobilizing to meet its daily quota of 1,200 to 1,500 arrests, armed with target lists, surveillance technology, and “less-lethal” weapons; and immigration detention facilities are to be built on military bases across the country.

And that’s not all either. Entire families are set to be detained, and the grim family-separation policy of the first Trump administration revived. Humanitarian parole is to be revoked, refugees rejected, and asylum-seekers returned. And cities, counties, and states that dare to defy the deportation regime are to be punished.

The machinery of mass deportation has been set in motion in a nightmarish fashion. It is meant to be impossible to stop—or at least to appear that way. Still, history teaches us that such a machine, like any other, can be brought to a halt, if only we understand how the apparatus actually works.

Here, then, is a simple, step-by-step guide to how the Trump administration plans to build the machinery necessary to “complete the largest deportation operation in American history.”

1. Declare a State of Emergency

“Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders,” Trump pledged in his Inaugural Address. “With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense.”

That “revolution” in immigration enforcement did indeed begin with a barrage of such orders, many lifted directly from the Project 2025 playbook.

First among them was the declaration of a state of emergency in this country’s borderlands. According to the National Emergencies Act of 1976, this allows the military to be called up for domestic duties, whether to the southern border, Guantánamo Bay, or anywhere else the president sees fit.

2. Equate Immigration With an “Invasion”

“I have determined that the current situation at the southern border qualifies as an invasion,” reads another order signed on January 20, citing Article IV of the Constitution.

“Accordingly,” the order continues, “I hereby suspend the physical entry of any alien engaged in the invasion.” It goes on to authorize operations to “repel, repatriate, or remove” noncitizens.

This is the logical conclusion of years of far-right propaganda about a “Third World,” “Hispanic,” or “alien” “invasion” of the United States, which, over time, has spread from the stuff of 8chan manifestos to the preambles of presidential proclamations.

3. Expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The architecture of ICE is slated to expand to levels not seen since its founding in 2003.

The agency reportedly made more than 14,000 arrests in the first three weeks of Trump’s second term. With it still supposedly failing to meet its quotas, however, officials want to double the size of the force.

Now, Senate Republicans are proposing no less than $175 billion in new spending on immigration enforcement, while the House GOP is looking to fund that spending spree with billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid and other essential social services.

4. Draft the Department of Justice

ICE is no longer to bear its burden alone. Since Trump’s inauguration, the DOJ, including the U.S. Attorney’s Offices, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), have been pressed into the service of the deportation machine.

The FBI, for instance, has been tasked with finding “identifying information and/or biometric data relating to noncitizens located illegally in the US”—data that will fuel the detention-to-deportation pipeline.

“We’ve got special agents, intelligence analysts, and more, supporting DHS [Department of Homeland Security] teams across the country,” said then-Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, “from New York and Chicago to El Paso, Newark, and Denver.”

5. Deputize Local Law Enforcement

ICE has also partnered with local police departments, county sheriff’s offices, and departments of correction through a program known as 287(g) to “identify and remove incarcerated criminal aliens” before they can be freed.

In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has typically promised to reopen an ICE office on Rikers Island, purportedly as part of a quid pro quo with the Trump administration.

And in February, Florida became the first state to sign a statewide 287(g) agreement, which would train officers of the Florida Highway Patrol and State Guard to “interrogate any suspected alien or person believed to be an alien.”

6. Criminalize all Immigrants as “Criminal Aliens”

When White House Press Secretary Katherine Leavitt was asked how many of those arrested since January 20 had a criminal record and how many were “just in the country illegally,” she replied, “All of them. Because they illegally broke our nation’s laws, and therefore, they are criminals.”

Tellingly, fewer than half of the 8,200 people arrested in the first two weeks of the Trump administration had criminal convictions of any kind. And of the approximately 4,400 detained in the first two weeks of February, more than 1,800 had never been charged with a crime.

7. Hunt for “Criminal Aliens” Everywhere

“Police, open the door! Policía, abra la puerta!”

Those words echoed across a Denver apartment complex, as ICE agents with long guns backed by BearCat tactical vehicles went door-to-door, asking residents for identification. Twenty-nine members of the Cedar Run community were rounded up in one go.

But ICE and its partners are not just hunting for undocumented immigrants in their homes. Thanks to a rule change instituted by DHS, federal agents are also pursuing their prey in locations previously deemed too “sensitive” for immigration enforcement purposes like schools, hospitals, courtrooms, and churches (though a federal judge in Maryland has already forbidden the Trump administration from carrying out such actions in certain houses of worship).

8. Collect Biometric Data

Another of Trump’s executive orders announced his intention to reauthorize the DOJ and DHS to collect DNA samples from all detained “non-United States persons.”

This DNA collection program is just one part of a vast surveillance apparatus that has been built up over the years, which now requires vast troves of biometric and biographic data to be collected, stored, and analyzed.

Increasingly, that task has fallen to for-profit firms. Since 2020, the federal government has spent an estimated $7.8 billion on such surveillance technologies, including a $96 million contract with Peter Thiel’s data-mining firm Palantir.

9. Put Immigrants in Prisons

The most recent data shows that America’s immigrant detention centers are already over capacity, with 41,500 beds and 43,759 inmates. ICE is now seeking to more than triple that capacity.

Trump pledged, on Day One, that he would allocate “all legally available resources” to immigrant detention, evidently including America’s prisons. In February, the Federal Bureau of Prisons took in the first ICE detainees at facilities in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

The policy also embraces military bases. The Northern Command is currently “providing facilities at Buckley Space Force Base… to enable [ICE] to stage and process criminal aliens within the US.”

10. Privatize Immigrant Detention

More than 90% of such detainees are already overseen by private contractors. Now, ICE is planning to warehouse thousands more by leasing mobile structures from a shipping container company.

And a new plan, floated by former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, would sell the government “outside assistance” in the form of privatized “processing camps,” along with a “small army” of private citizens with the power to arrest and detain immigrants.

For the prison industry, the deportation drive has proven to be a profitable enterprise indeed. “This is truly one of the most exciting periods in my career,” said CoreCivic’s CEO on a recent call with investors.

11. Bring Back Family Detention

During the first Trump administration, America was haunted by the specter of immigrant children in cages. Now, the architect of the president’s “zero-tolerance” policy and recently appointed “border czar” Tom Homan plans to revive family detention on a whole new scale.

Family detention centers, according to the Detention Watch Network, have a “well-documented history of negligence and abuse.” Despite that sordid history, ICE is reportedly readying a “Request for Proposal” (RFP) for “detention facilities intended specifically for families.”

At the same time, the administration is making it harder for sponsors of immigrant children to free them from detention.

12. Send Asylum-Seekers to Other Countries

The deportation machine is no longer simply an American enterprise. It is now an international affair, with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama already taking in thousands of “third-country deportees.”

“We have offered the USA the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system,” says El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, whose prisons are rife with human rights violations.

In Panama, hundreds of deportees of Central and East Asian origin were recently locked in a hotel, then relocated to a makeshift camp in the middle of the jungle. “It looks like a zoo, there are fenced cages,” according to one eyewitness.

13. Designate Gangs as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations”

One of the president’s most egregious orders asserts that alleged gang affiliations are sufficient to warrant a “terrorist” designation.

Declaring it “time for America to wage war on the cartels,” Trump has specifically targeted Mexican, Central American, and Venezuelan nationals suspected of having ties to the drug cartels, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), or the Tren de Aragua gang, seeking their “expedited removal” or their “total elimination.”

The same order signals the president’s intention to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law dating to 1798, which would subject “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects” of a “hostile” nation to being “apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed, as alien enemies.”

14. Deport International Students and Workers Who Protest U.S. Policy

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.” So warned the statement accompanying the president’s January 29 executive order, which singled out supposedly “pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals” in higher education for “removal.”

Authorities have evidently already begun implementing that order, with reports of Arab students facing deportation for participating in pro-Palestine protests. Over the weekend, ICE agents showed up at the door of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist at Columbia University whose green card had reportedly been revoked by the Trump administration. While in government custody, Khalil was disappeared for several days.

“I’ve seen enough,” says Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, “to know that targeting is happening.”

15. Freeze Refugee Admissions

“Refugee arrivals to the United States have been suspended until further notice.” That was the message on January 21 from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, now under the leadership of a senior ICE official. With a stroke of the pen, President Trump has frozen America’s Refugee Admissions Program.

In so doing, he has left at least 10,000 refugees in legal limbo, while abandoning hundreds of thousands more to their fates in places like Afghanistan, the Congo, and Myanmar.

Ultimately, the president would make one exception to the rule—for white South Africans. An executive order signed on February 7 would “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees” as a protected class.

16. Terminate Temporary Protected Status

Under the new administration’s policies, hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Ukrainians, and Venezuelans, among others, are set to lose their Temporary Protected Status (TPS)—a form of humanitarian parole that permitted asylum-seekers from those countries to continue living and working in the U.S.

Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced an “administrative pause” on all pending parole requests, while DHS, claiming parole is a right “to which no alien is entitled,” has authorized its agents to strip immigrants of such protections.

ICE agents have already started making arrests of TPS holders in Texas.

17. Undermine the Principle of Birthright Citizenship

Of all the president’s orders, the most consequential for citizens is the one that would rescind birthright citizenship, which would deny the rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to “persons born or naturalized in the U.S.”

In practice, it would mean stripping citizenship rights from children born here to mothers who are “unlawfully present” or whose presence is “lawful but temporary.”

For now, the order has been blocked by a Seattle judge’s injunction, but it will undoubtedly fall to the Supreme Court to decide its fate (and the fate of the Constitution of which it’s a part).

18. Investigate Citizens Who Would Defend Immigrant Rights

As it happens, immigrants and their American-born children are not the only ones in the crosshairs. Federal agents are now actively soliciting bids for “internet-based threat risk mitigation and monitoring services” in order to surveil suspected political enemies on social media.

That initiative is part of what could become a coast-to-coast crackdown. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has, ominously enough, launched a “formal investigation” into a local radio station, the San Francisco-based KCBS 740 AM, for reporting on the whereabouts of ICE agents.

And only recently, Tom Homan, designated the “border czar” by President Trump, invited the Department of Justice to investigate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), reportedly in retaliation for a “Know Your Rights” training session held under the auspices of her office.

19. Punish “Sanctuary” cities, Counties, and States

On Day One of the president’s second term, the White House announced that it was going on the warpath against “sanctuary” jurisdictions, where local laws place limits on the involvement of law enforcement in the business of immigration.

Since then, the Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group within the Office of the Associate Attorney General has been engaged in an all-out lawfare campaign against cities, counties, and states suspected of being insufficiently cooperative.

And on February 19, Trump signed yet another executive order cutting off federal funding for such jurisdictions, so that “federal payments to States and localities do not, by design or effect, abet so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies.”

20. Manipulate the Truth

All the while, the deportation machine’s defenders have been seriously manipulating the truth.

First, ICE has turned images of inmates in captivity into a televised spectacle, with federal agents bringing film crews and TV celebrities with them for ride-alongs, even as they covered up evidence of their more controversial tactics.

Second, the agency has attempted to make itself look better by rewriting history and gaming the Google algorithm by manipulating the timestamps on thousands of press releases from the first Trump administration.

Finally, ICE has scrubbed all mention of the foreign nationals held in Guantanamo from its public communications. For days on end, 177 detainees effectively disappeared.

This is the fate envisioned by the architects of the deportation machine for America’s “tired,” its “poor,” its “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

In the end, however, such an apparatus has a potentially fatal flaw. In order to function effectively, millions and millions of people must be willing to go along with it.

The moment too many Americans cease to cooperate, that machinery will begin to break down in a serious fashion.