When a fundamentally punitive position is embraced by both candidates, you can pretty much bank on voters choosing the more cruel of the two. And with both presidential candidates running on asylum crackdowns and increasing border militarization, the anti-immigrant movement was well positioned to influence policy no matter the outcome of yesterday’s presidential election. Still, the movement’s favored candidate undeniably won.
In a press release following the election results, prominent anti-immigrant group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) notes that it “looks forward to working with the incoming administration,” and claims the election provides a mandate for “the Trump-Vance administration to take decisive action to restore order to our borders.” On “Day One” FAIR calls for the incoming administration to implement multiple policies, including:
- Resume border wall construction;
- Reinstate Migrant Protection Protocols (also known as “Remain in Mexico”) and other asylum restrictions like safe first country agreements;
- Terminate parole and other programs offering deportation relief like Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA);
- Direct Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct worksite investigations, placing untold numbers of undocumented workers into the deportation machine;
- Pass the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2), legislation supported by FAIR and other influential right-wing organizations including The Heritage Foundation that would codify many of the policies listed above.
In the coming weeks, FAIR is also likely to publish a list of additional steps the incoming administration can take, many via executive action, as it did in 2016. Recent history suggests most, if not all, of these policies will be pursued. FAIR and its sibling organizations attained significant influence during the Trump administration, providing both policy recommendations and personnel to realize those goals. With more experience, multiple years of hindsight, and fewer likely barriers within the right-wing establishment, a second Trump administration is well-positioned to be even more cruel, as the New Yorker’s Masha Gessen put it, than it was the first time around.
FAIR’s “Day One” proposals only represent a portion of the stated anti-immigrant aims for the next administration. Trump and trusted officials, including Stephen Miller, who’s widely expected to serve in a senior role in the next administration, have pledged unprecedented resources towards detention and deportation. Miller and Trump have stated they will invoke laws from the 18th and 19th centuries like The Insurrection Act to expedite removals and allow federal agents to apprehend migrants.
Those aims—including “the largest deportation operation in American history”—will not be easily realized. In a post-election message, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), another organization created by FAIR’s late White nationalist founder John Tanton, gloatingly suggested a draconian, long-running proposal: immigrants should pursue self-deportation. “Use the next couple of months to get your affairs in order, pack up your belongings, and go home for Christmas on your own terms,” the CIS leader wrote. “It’ll be easier for everyone, & more dignified than the alternative.”
But there’s nothing dignified about the anti-immigrant movement’s bigoted agenda of expulsion and demonization. Movements for justice must marshal all resources to reject the emboldened MAGA movement’s violent vision, putting up as many obstacles as possible in defense of immigrant and other marginalized communities.
