Democracy Dies in Darkness

Trump wants to punish all of his enemies, not just immigrants

In recent days, Donald Trump has increasingly described his critics and political opponents in terms suggesting that they, too, would be targeted by his administration.

6 min
Former president Donald Trump holds a rally in Coachella, Calif., on Saturday. (Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post)
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At first, he would just talk about immigrants living in the country illegally.

Make him president again, Donald Trump told his audiences, and he would make sure that undocumented immigrants were uprooted and deported. When he ran in 2016, he focused mostly on those immigrants who were identified as criminals, an argument his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), elevated during the vice-presidential debate earlier this month. But, in part because Trump constantly exaggerates the scale of the undocumented immigrant population, his 2024 pitch now centers on something much more sweeping, intentionally targeting and expelling theoretical tens of millions of people.

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His idea is to cobble together an ad hoc group of enforcers tasked with sweeping the country for targets.

“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,” he explained in a recent social media post, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies.

Described like that, it might look at a bit like the streets of D.C. in June 2020, when, in response to protests focused on the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota, the Trump administration pulled in enforcers from various parts of the government, some of whom intentionally stripped off any identifying insignia. These were the demonstrations that prompted Trump to suggest that protesters be beaten or shot.

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