Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration would declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

In an early morning social media post, Trump responded “TRUE!!!” to a post by Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who wrote on 8 November that the next administration “will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program”.

Since his decisive victory, Trump has said he intends to make good on his campaign promise to execute mass deportations, beginning on the first day of his presidency. But many aspects of what he has described as the “largest deportation program in American history” remain unclear.

Trump has previously suggested he would rely on wartime powers, military troops and sympathetic state and local leaders. Such a sprawling campaign – and the use of military personnel to carry it out – is almost certain to draw legal challenges and pushback from Democratic leaders, some of whom have already said they would refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.

    • athairmor@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Isn’t it illegal to use the military internally? The National Guard, maybe. But, they answer to the state government.

      He’ll have pushback if not outright mutiny from the military if he tries to use them against civilians, citizens or not.

      • minnow@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Why do you think his first order of business is to court martial anybody who he thinks won’t do his bidding?

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Ahh, but this is why he’s already forming a board to throw out any officers that are brash enough to get in his way, bypassing official channels. The endgame, as I see it, is a complete reorganization of the command structure, ending with something that looks like Russia, where specific orders come directly from the top of the government all the way down the chain, to squad-level sometimes. This gets rid of the extremely effective tactical flexibility that made the US so effective in WWII, but it also makes it so you can just axe any part of that totem pole that’s stupid enough to get in your way without much problem.

        • tyler@programming.dev
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          2 days ago

          I don’t know much about military structure, but this sure does sound like something straight out of Putin’s book to make the US weaker, weak enough to attack.

          Not that it would have any chance, but Putin’s a moron anyway so.

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            If we are in the middle of an active shooting civil war as a consequence of this, it sure would have a chance. Also, the qons seem to be in their pockets anyway.

          • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Fascism is an excellent way to weaken a country. Strong centralized government is very important, but it needs to be an effective government, not one stupid asshole. When its 1000s of technocrats it works very well.

    • Bieren@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Simple. Door to door searches. Just like some European country in the 1930s. This will go over great until people start knocking on the doors of his worshippers.

      That, or like almost everything else he says, there is no detailed thought applied.

      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        That is a lot of work for very little benefit. I doubt they will do anything other than waste money and not care about the environment.