President-elect Donald Trump appeared early Monday to confirm he would declare a national emergency and enlist the help of the U.S. military to carry out a mass deportation plan that became central to his campaign.
The news came in an overnight repost on his social media network, Truth Social. Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, posted on the platform that Trump’s administration would use “military assets” to conduct deportations.
“TRUE!!!,” Trump wrote.
The subject of immigration took center stage in the closing months of Trump’s presidential campaign, as he promised the deportation of gang members and criminals who were in the U.S. illegally. He pledged such deportations during an October stop in Aurora, a city he made the poster child for his stance on immigration due to national attention on the presence of Venezuelan gang members in the city.
He labeled the proposed effort “Operation Aurora,” a term apparently borrowed from law enforcement in San Antonio, Texas who had arrested in droves gang members that had infiltrated an apartment complex there.
“We will send elite squads of ICE, Border Patrol, and federal law enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left in this country,” Trump said during a rally at the Gaylord Rockies. “And if they come back into our country, they will be told it is an automatic 10-year sentence in jail with no possibility of parole.”
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‘Operation Aurora’: Trump promises federal deportation effort at Colorado rally
In a later rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Trump said he would immediately implement “the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out,” according to ABC News.
Among Trump’s first picks for his cabinet and staff were two supporters of his immigration policies in Stephen Miller and Tom Homan – deputy chief of staff and “border czar,” respectively. Homan has previously said the government should prioritize the removal of criminals and national security threats, but said at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington earlier this year that “no one’s off the table.”
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'Operation Aurora' would deport violent criminals. Supporters hope it does more
A recent report from the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit and non-partisan organization, found mass deportations would have "devastating costs" for the country, its budget and the economy. Denver7 charted some of the key findings of that report in the infographic below: