Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of mass deportations. He sold America on the idea that he would deport several million people. There is no historical analogue for such a regime.
Because Trump is Trump, he was always light on details. Would these people be rounded up in the streets? Would there be raids on workplaces? Would the military be involved? Would apprehended migrants be housed in camps?
What’s more, it’s not even clear that a majority of Americans believed Trump. Over and over we’ve seen signs that some large percentage of Americans didn’t think Trump would actually go through with deporting 5 million or 10 million people. Meanwhile, many of Trump’s most diehard fans—and most senior advisors—seemed to believe that Trump meant every word of it and that a great cleansing was about to commence.
Well, reality is about to intrude, one way or another. Our challenge from the outside is trying to understand what that reality is.
That’s what
is going to do in Huddled Masses.
Twice a week, Adrian will report from the front-lines. He’ll cover the policy, the execution, the politics, and the human stories that make up this mess that we euphemistically call “immigration.” If Trump really pursues mass deportations, Adrian will be there. If Trump tries to sell some scaled-back immigration policy as mass deportations—like how he “built The Wall”—Adrian will be there for that, too.
The point of Huddled Masses is to shine a light on what’s really happening at a moment when the federal government is being led by hucksters, charlatans, and felons who want very much to deceive and obfuscate.
Adrian is one of the country’s top immigration reporters and he’s been covering this beat since the Obama years. He’s broken news for Politico, the Guardian, and Vanity Fair (among other outlets). Now he’s here to make us all smarter about this new world we find ourselves in.
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In the next few weeks I’ll be in touch about other new projects we’re launching. Liberalism may be down; but it’s not defeated. And neither are we.
—JVL