Donald Trump is coming back into office this month on a vow to initiate the “largest” mass deportation operation in American history, and says he plans to unleash the U.S. military to help him do it. But according to three sources familiar with internal policy discussions in Trump’s circle, the president-elect and several of his key lieutenants are aware that their desired, larger-scale crackdowns — which could involve a new network of militarized “camps” — will take significant time to execute.
In the meantime, Trump and his incoming anti-immigration crew have plans to fill the gaps in part by leaning heavily into generating relentless propaganda and (as one Trump transition official puts it) “media spectacle” that many of them hope will cause undocumented immigrants to flee the country and persuade migrants not to come to America.
The racist terror campaign that Team Trump unleashed on the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio, will likely serve as a model for what the Trump White House has in store for immigrants across America. And it’s a model that pro-immigration attorneys and nonprofit organizations are getting ready to combat, to counter such a widespread “media spectacle” and potential onrush of misinformation that could very well do some of Trump’s immigration-crackdown work for him.
For weeks, Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan and other advisers to the president-elect have been telling anyone who will listen that the start of the new administration will feature a “shock and awe” show of force regarding migrants and undocumented immigrants. The Trump administration is, of course, preparing to begin by imposing, re-imposing, and doing things that the Biden administration is not. However, much of what the country is likely to see take place during the dawn of the second Trump presidency will look an awful lot like the implementation of policies or practices that are currently in place.
For instance, under Joe Biden and other presidents, ICE has already been conducting arrests of undocumented individuals charged or accused of violent crimes in blue states and sanctuary cities controlled by Democrats. Such arrests are generally uncontroversial, given that few liberals actually oppose such arrests. You can find evidence of such arrests in the news, or in standard Biden administration press releases.
The difference is: President Biden is typically not going out in public and bellowing about how “tough” he is — and how these arrests should serve as a warning to the millions of undocumented immigrants in America, their families, those with legal protected status, and anyone else who may feel compelled to make a similar journey to the United States. Trump, on the other hand, will not be coy about wielding that propaganda bullhorn, even if it’s to highlight arrests or raids that are barely any different than what is already standard operating procedure.
According to the three sources, there have been recent internal discussions within Trump’s government-in-waiting, including with the president-elect himself, not only about launching high-profile, big-city raids at the very beginning of the second term — but about how to inject those raids into the media ecosystem and social-media bloodstream as aggressively as possible.
These ideas have included tipping off friendly media, such as Fox News, to generate news footage of the actions; sending along the administration’s own camera crews; coordinating with, and pumping out video, photos, and announcements to top influencers on popular social media sites; having billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk wield his X platform (formerly Twitter) to whip up a MAGAfied propaganda loop highlighting these law-enforcement operations; and, of course, letting Trump boast garrulously on TV and online about these operations.
A major objective of this, the sources tell Rolling Stone, is to create a massive chilling effect that will scare undocumented immigrants and their families (even if they have children who were born here) into potentially fleeing the U.S. preemptively or “self-deporting,” for fear that they could get a knock on the door from Trump’s forces at any moment — or perhaps have their family separated. Another intended effect of this style of “shock and awe” propaganda, well before Trump and Republicans can attempt to carry out their grandest-scale crackdown blueprints, is to frighten migrants and others from even attempting to come to America.
One other possible net-benefit for them and Trump, the sources add, is that doing this in sanctuary cities or Democratic strongholds in the country will set up an early confrontation that they are craving with liberal mayors and governors in those states. It’s Trumpland and elite Republicans’ wish that this propaganda and highly nativist public-relations campaign boxes Dems in, in the sense that Democratic politicians who vowed to resist Trump’s coming onslaught risk appearing weak if they don’t stand up to this. But if the liberal mayors — in Chicago, for instance — and governors were to pick a fight over this, they could be seen as objecting to the kinds of more selective arrests with which they don’t actually have a problem, hence feeding into Trump’s lies and smears that Democrats don’t support punishing, say, actual violent gang members who came from foreign countries.
These are objectives that pro-immigration groups and attorneys are preparing to vigorously combat with education campaigns and their own messaging — though they know it’ll be, putting it mildly, an uphill battle against the weight of the state, Trump, Musk, and conservative and other mainstream media.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, and their team had already started creating this propaganda and social media-fueled chilling effect, and in some cases got tangible, real-world results months before they won the election.
In the final months of the 2024 race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Team Trump and prominent conservatives engaged in a sustained, racist, and lie-driven blitz against the community of Haitian immigrants living and working legally in the city of Springfield, Ohio. Trump and Vance’s lies, pumped out on social and more traditional media, helped create a wave of bomb threats, evacuations, and a palpable sense of terror in the small American city. At the time, some of the Haitians wondered if they should flee. Some did pack up and leave Springfield, out of concern for their and their children’s safety.
Once Trump won in early November, things only got worse for the Haitians of Springfield.
“People are really scared. I think a lot of the Haitians are concerned that their rights will be violated,” said Katie Kersh, an immigration lawyer based in Dayton, Ohio, who has been conducting legal clinics for Haitian immigrants in Springfield. “We are right now trying to make sure that people understand their rights, and allay their fears that they’ll be on a plane back to Haiti on Jan. 21, which is not how the law works.”
She added: “This is going to be a time when people’s due process rights are threatened, and it’s important that, as a country, we stick up for and defend these people in any way we can. In my conversations with the dozens of people we see at the clinics every week, and Haitian community leaders, and people who come up to ask me questions, it seems like a lot of immigrants… feel that the country doesn’t want them here. People who care about what’s happening need to show up for these individuals, even if it’s not in their immediate community, to show that that’s not the case.”
