January 10, 2025

By John Herrman

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: AP Images

Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that come January 20, he will institute the biggest mass deportation in American history. He has appointed Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, two voluble and competent immigration hard-liners, to pursue his draconian agenda and says he will use the military, among other agencies, to carry it out. But Trump’s grand plans will almost certainly crash into a more prosaic reality, one dotted with bureaucratic roadblocks and political hurdles. Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, recently wrote an illuminating New York Times op-ed about how the logistics of mass deportation might — or might not — actually work. (Lind worked at Vox.com for several years.) I spoke with her about what the first few weeks of the Trump administration might look like for undocumented immigrants, why the U.S.-Mexico relationship is so key to hard-line policies, and whether the American public will do less protesting this time around.

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