Americans can expect a deportation operation of 15 million people and the implementation of programs designed to monitor women who violate the abortion ban if Donald Trump wins another term in the White House in 2024.
Trump is ready to reform American policy and has worked this out interviews with TIME Magazine what some of these major overhauls would entail.
In a wide-ranging interview on April 12 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the former president confirmed he would use detention camps to house illegal immigrants during deportation efforts.
He also did not rule out deploying the military to round up the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country. As of January 2022, the population of illegal immigrants in the US was estimated at 11.35 million.
Trump has repeatedly said he would take aggressive action to address the border issue on the first day of his second term, after President Joe Biden reversed almost all of his policies and plunged the country into an all-out illegal immigration crisis.
Donald Trump sat down for a wide-ranging interview with TIME Magazine, in which he outlined what Americans can expect “if he” wins another term in the White House in 2024
His proposals include calling in local law enforcement, the National Guard and, if necessary, members of the U.S. military to round up illegal immigrants for deportation.
TIME National Politics Reporter Eric Cortellessa asked Trump if he would override the Posse Comitatus Act, which says the U.S. military cannot be used against civilians.
“Well, these aren’t civilians,” the former president responded. ‘These are people who do not legally reside in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion the likes of which probably no country has ever seen before.’
‘They come in by the millions. I believe we have 15 million now. And I think you’ll have 20 million by the time this ends,” Trump predicted. “And that’s bigger than almost every state.”
He also said it is unlikely he would have to house these immigrants in detention camps as he plans to deport them quickly – but he did not rule out building more shelters during the operation if necessary.
“No, I’m not ruling anything out,” Trump said. ‘But there wouldn’t be much need for that [detention camps], due to the fact that we are going to move them. We’re going to bring them back from where they came.”
Since Biden took office, the US has seen record numbers of illegal border crossings.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has apprehended more than 7.6 million migrants crossing the southern border illegally – the majority traveling from Central and South American countries in an attempt to seek asylum in the US.
Trump took a rather lukewarm stance on abortion earlier this month when he released a video claiming he did not support a ban at the federal level because the issue should be decided by individual states.
But he wouldn’t say one way or the other whether he would veto a federal abortion ban bill if it came to his desk in a second term, saying it is highly unlikely that any legislation on this issue would end up on his desk. because that would require 60 votes in the Senate.
Trump did not rule out using the military to round up millions of illegal immigrants in a mass deportation effort to remove those living in the US without documentation.
As of January 2022, it was estimated that there were more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the US. Trump predicts that this has now reached 15 million under Biden’s border crisis. Pictured: Asylum seekers line up at the southern border after illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico
“I don’t have to commit to it because… it’s about states’ rights,” Trump said. “You don’t want to go back into the federal government. This was all about getting out of the federal government.”
In addition, the former president did not say whether he would oppose states implementing programs to monitor women’s pregnancies in an effort to prosecute mothers if they are found to be violating abortion laws.
“Do you think states should monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they had an abortion after the ban?” Cortellessa asked the 2024 Republican candidate.
Trump responded, “I think they might.” Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.”
‘Look, [overturning] Roe v. Wade was about bringing it back to the United States,” he added. “And that was a legal — and possibly in the hearts of some, in the minds of some — a moral decision.”
When pressed about being “comfortable” prosecuting women for having abortions while a ban exists in certain states, Trump reiterated that it is not the federal government’s place to interfere.
‘It doesn’t matter whether I feel comfortable or not. It’s completely irrelevant because the states are going to make these decisions,” Trump said.
“And besides, Texas will be different than Ohio. And Ohio will be different than Michigan.”
The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, ruled in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that the federal government does not have the constitutional authority to decide whether or not a woman can terminate her pregnancy. The ruling overturned a nearly fifty-year precedent set by Roe v. Wade that provided national protection for women’s right to abortion.
Trump admitted that many Republicans don’t know how to properly talk about abortion, but said reversing Roe has removed “an enormous burden on everyone” in the federal government by returning the issue to the states.
He also said that some states are going further than he personally would like, but voters in those states will decide where to go on this issue.
For example, Florida wants to implement a ban that would make it illegal to have an abortion after six weeks, which is sometimes before a woman finds out she is pregnant.
He also did not denounce the prospect that states could implement programs to monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute them if they violate the abortion ban. PicturedL A pro-life protester outside the Supreme Court on April 15 calls for a ban on a pill that ends pregnancies
Some call these proposals the “heartbeat bill” because a fetal heartbeat can usually be detected within six weeks.
Campaign manager for President Biden’s re-election campaign, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said Trump’s comments to TIME make it clear that “if elected, he will sign a national abortion ban, allow women who have abortions to be prosecuted and punished and the government will allow it to invade’. women’s privacy to monitor their pregnancies, and endanger IVF and contraception nationwide.”
“Simply put, the November election will determine whether women in the United States have reproductive freedom, or whether the new Trump administration will continue its assault on control of women’s health care decisions,” she added in a statement about the interview.
The interview discussed several other topics, including the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Trump says his name for those who rioted at the Capitol that day is “J-6 patriots.”
He also admitted that he would have a hard time hiring anyone for his potential administration who believes President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.
“I wouldn’t feel good about it because I think anyone who doesn’t see that election was stolen, you just have to look at the evidence. It’s so big, state legislators where they haven’t gone through the legislature,” he said of hiring someone who doesn’t believe the “big lie.”
The former president’s interview will appear in the May 17 issue of TIME, which will feature a cover with a black-and-white image of Trump sitting on a stool and frowning at the camera, with “If He Wins” written in white. written on the cover.
Following a speech at Mar-a-Lago on April 12, Cortellessa followed up with a telephone conversation on April 27.