Home Part of States Newsroom
News
Trump, Project 2025 embrace ruinous immigration plan, say critics 

Share

The Deciders series background 1

Trump, Project 2025 embrace ruinous immigration plan, say critics 

Sep 10, 2024 | 8:00 am ET
By Dana Gentry
Trump, Project 2025 embrace ruinous immigration plan, say critics聽
Description
"Mass deportation now" was a poplar refrain at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Former Pres. Donald Trump, who has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, an authoritarian blueprint for the next conservative U.S. presidency, would be hard pressed to find any daylight between his immigration policy and that advocated by Project 2025.  

The cornerstone of both policies is the militaristic removal of unauthorized immigrants, a move that would be disastrous for Nevada families and its economy. 

 “Following the Eisenhower Model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said while campaigning last year. 

The “Eisenhower Model” is Operation Wetback, an effort mounted by the U.S. in 1954, estimated to have swept up more than one million immigrants, as well as brown-skinned Americam citizens, says Prof. Michael Kagan of UNLV’s Boyd School of Law. 

“There actually were two mass deportations of Mexicans – one in the early 1930s in the Hoover administration, and then Operation Wetback under Eisenhower – both targeting Mexicans, both deporting more than a million people and both deporting a very large number of U.S. citizens, too.” 

Nevada is home to some 168,000 undocumented immigrants, according to 2019 data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute. That’s down from 210,000 in 2016, as estimated by Pew Research.

Census data indicates more than a quarter of unauthorized immigrants in Nevada  have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years, and a majority for more than a decade. About a third are homeowners. 

Trump, who alleges immigrants “are poisoning the blood of our country,” said in an interview with Time Magazine in April that he’d rely on police and the National Guard to accomplish the task of removing 11 million undocumented immigrants.  

“If I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military,” he said. “We have to have safety in our country. We have to have law and order in our country. And whichever gets us there, but I think the National Guard will do the job.”

Kagan says Trump is likely aware that the Posse Comitatus Act places fewer restrictions on deploying the National Guard for domestic law enforcement than there would be to deploy the Army.  

The National Guard could “do the most damage” by executing the logistics of mass deportation, says Kagan, by “rapidly constructing tent detention centers and providing planes and buses to deport to foreign countries.”

The plan also authorizes local law enforcement to participate in border security actions and penalizes jurisdictions that do not comply. 

Gov. Joe Lombardo, who endorsed Trump, “does not support Project 2025,” according to his spokeswoman, who declined to say whether the governor supports Trump’s plans for massive deportation using the National Guard.

Project 2025’s immigration policy embraces the use of military force to achieve its objective. 

“Prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical if we are to regain control of the border, repair the historic damage done by the Biden Administration, return to a lawful and orderly immigration system, and protect the homeland from terrorism and public safety threats,” says the manifesto, which would require Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to remove, arrest, and detain violators without warrant, when possible, by removing due process rights. 

“That’s terrifying,” says Kagan of expedited removal, the process that requires immigrants to prove they’ve been in the U.S. for two years or be deported. “It would be done in a way that would be highly discriminatory and most likely target people who look Latino and who might not speak English perfectly or might fit someone’s image of what an undocumented immigrant looks like, but it might be a U.S. citizen.”

Project 2025 would eliminate prohibitions on enforcement action in ‘sensitive zones,’ opening the door to raids on schools, hospitals, and religious institutions.

“I think some people roll their eyes and think, ‘Well, Donald Trump just says stuff,’ or ‘they put crazy things in Project 2025 but they wouldn’t really do that.’”

– Michael Kagan, UNLV’s Boyd School of Law

“There’s going to be a lot of self-deportation,” Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said during a television interview this summer. “Simply talking about this and beginning to implement a plan — and President Trump deserves a lot of credit for talking about this — causes people to say, ‘I don’t want to run the risk of being arrested for doing something illegal.’ But secondly, there are great plans using the Department of Homeland Security to return these people back to south of the border.”

Project 2025 encourages the use of the military to crack down on peaceful migrants arriving at the border, instructing the Department of Defense to “assist in aggressively building the border wall system on America’s southern border. Additionally, explicitly acknowledge and adjust personnel and priorities to participate actively in the defense of America’s borders, including using military personnel and hardware to prevent illegal crossings between ports of entry and channel all cross-border traffic to legal ports of entry.”

The proposal also considers engaging in war with drug cartels in Mexico.

Ode to the nation-state

Previous stabs at deportation in America have harmed the economy, depressed wages and hiring, and eliminated jobs, says Maribel Hastings of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration reform organization. She notes in a column that Trump’s deportation plan, if successful, would remove 5% of the U.S. workforce.

“Of the approximately 11 million undocumented people, 8 million work. Moreover, these individuals work in critical industries in our economy,” Hastings wrote. “They constitute 22% of all farm workers, 15% of construction workers, and 8% of workers in the manufacturing industry. The economic disaster would be huge.”

Trump, Project 2025 embrace ruinous immigration plan, say critics聽
This year Trump twisted arms among Republicans in Congress to kill a bipartisan border security bill that was opposed by some immigration advocates for going too far to curb immigration. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Hastings cites an analysis from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy that concludes mass deportation adversely affects society because businesses do not replace the deported workers. 

“This is because they do not find U.S. workers who want to do the jobs; they turn to machines to replace the workers, depending on the industry, or because they reduce operations, resulting in layoffs, elimination of positions, or salary reductions,” she writes.

Kagan of UNLV’s Boyd School of Law says given a “real mass deportation campaign – the kind that Donald Trump is talking about, the devastation to the Nevada economy and to Nevada’s families and communities is something that I don’t think anyone alive has any lived experience to calculate, to understand.”

Progressives, Project 2025 suggests, “seek to purge the very concept of the nation-state from the American ethos, no matter how much crime increases or resources drop for schools and hospitals or wages decrease for the working class.”

Kagan labels the assertions as “hogwash.” 

Undocumented immigrants do earn less than their documented counterparts – as much as 35% less, according to scholars at Harvard University, often because they have few choices. They  also work for cash and are susceptible to wage theft at the hands of employers who know their workers’ recourse is limited by virtue of their status.

“Project 2025 would be devastating for our economy, and in the emotional cost for families and the community,” says Bliss Requa-Trautz, executive director of the Arriba Worker Center in Las Vegas, which assists workers victimized by wage theft. 

The U.S. Dept. of Labor issued protection to workers who sought help from Arriba when their employer, painting contractor Unforgettable Coatings, refused to pay workers overtime. The company eventually entered a settlement agreement with the government. 

“Unforgettable Coatings is the first case in which the government issued Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement (DALE) to remedy wage theft,” says Requa-Trautz. “When workers have DALE, it increases willingness and trust in labor agencies to be able to participate in wage cases, which is essential to taking employers to court.”

The oft-repeated allegations that undocumented immigrants are criminals who sponge off the system at the expense of taxpayers are untrue, according to experts. Crime committed by unauthorized immigrants does not occur at a higher rate than crime committed by citizens.

Peer reviewed research published  in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) analyzed data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which records the immigration status of all arrested in the state. 

“Contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years,” the PNAS authors wrote in 2020, adding the findings “help us understand why the most aggressive immigrant removal programs have not delivered on their crime reduction promises and are unlikely to do so in the future.” 

The claim that undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes is also a fallacy, says Kagan, who notes that unlike citizens, undocumented immigrants sometimes never realize the benefits of the taxes they pay.

“An undocumented person who is working under an assumed name or social security number, and paying payroll taxes, will never get the benefit of those tax contributions through Social Security,” he notes. “The undocumented worker who often is working on a fake social security number, is actually doing the American Treasury a huge favor.” 

A study released this year from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning, nonprofit think tank, found undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022.  Undocumented immigrants would contribute another $40.2 billion more per year in federal, state and local taxes if the population had legal permission to work, pay taxes, and receive the benefits. 

In Nevada, undocumented immigrants paid a total of $507.1 million in taxes, with more than half, $271.9 million, in the form of sales tax. 

Project 2025 makes no mention of the tax contributions made by undocumented workers.

Family values

Project 2025 places great value on families, but its immigration policy would splinter millions of households that include an unauthorized immigrant, or one with temporary protective status as a result of deferred action.  

Nevada has the highest share of households (9%) in the nation that include an undocumented person, according to Pew Research. 

“If you bump into a random person, the chances that that person is undocumented are basically higher in the state of Nevada than in any other state in the country,” says Kagan, who adds the provisions of Project 2025 and Trump’s agenda “could really turn things kind of upside down here.”

About a quarter million Nevadans, including nearly 136,000 U.S. citizens, lived with at least one family member who is undocumented between 2010 and 2014, according to the Center for American Progress. 

“There are great plans using the Department of Homeland Security to return these people back to south of the border.”

– Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation

An estimated one in seven children in Nevada are U.S. citizens who live with at least one undocumented family member, says an analysis of American Community Survey data compiled by the American Immigration Council.

Kagan notes frustrated teachers who seek more family involvement with their child’s education will be stymied should one in seven students lose a parent to deportation. 

Additionally, Project 2025 would bar U.S. citizens from receiving federal housing aid if they live with anyone who is not a citizen or permanent legal resident.

“I have known people whose families have had a mother or father deported,” says Kagan, who compares the grief “to a family who’s just had someone die. It’s not in the natural course of the life cycle. It’s a shock, and suddenly there’s an empty chair at the kitchen table. The psychological impact of that is immense.”

Project 2025 seeks to transfer the detention of children from the purview of the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Homeland Security. It also suggests repealing the law that provides benefits to immigrant children, asserting it “only encourages more parents to send their children across the border illegally and unaccompanied.,”The manifesto also insists Congress must end the Flores Settlement Agreement, which details protections for children in custody.

“Such standards should focus on meeting human needs and should allow for large-scale use of temporary facilities (for example, tents),” says Project 2025.  

“It keeps me up at night,” says Kagan, who believes Trump and Project 2025’s policies are “doable. I think people are not as scared as they should be, partly because we haven’t seen it before,” says Kagan. “I think some people roll their eyes and think, ‘Well, Donald Trump just says stuff,’ or ‘they put crazy things in Project 2025 but they wouldn’t really do that.’”

A review of Trump’s record indicates a clear capability to do the unthinkable – an attempt to ban travel to the U..S. based on religious affiliation; an attempt at insurrection; and in the immigration arena, an attempt to remove undocumented immigrants without due process via expedited removal. “The Trump administration actually took steps to implement expedited removal at the end of 2019, but we didn’t see it in practice because of COVID,” says Kagan. 

This year Trump twisted arms among Republicans in Congress to kill a bipartisan border security bill that was opposed by some immigration advocates for going too far to curb immigration.  

During a campaign visit to Nevada, Trump told the crowd “blame it on me” for the bill’s failure.

‘Housekeepers, landscapers, and busboys’ 

Undocumented workers make up 9% of Nevada’s workforce, the highest percentage in the nation, according to a Pew Research review of data from 2021. 

More than two-thirds of unauthorized immigrants in Nevada, age 16 and up are employed. Of those, 30% have jobs in the hospitality industry, arts, or recreation, and 20% work in construction. 

“Most of us here in Las Vegas are living in houses that are likely built by undocumented immigrants,” says Kagan, adding Nevada’s housing crisis would be exacerbated by a lack of labor in the event of mass deportations. “When we renovate our kitchens, they’re likely renovated by undocumented immigrants.” 

More than half of hospitality workers in Culinary Local 226, a politically active union that is essential to tourism, are of Hispanic descent.

Trump, who owns a hotel in Las Vegas, is vowing to stop taxing hospitality and other workers’ tips.  It’s unknown how many of those workers are undocumented immigrants. 

His campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the potential disruption deportation could bring to Nevada’s hospitality industry, including his own property. 

Trump, Project 2025 embrace ruinous immigration plan, say critics聽
People walk past a Heritage Foundation welcome sign for the Republican National Convention (RNC) at the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport on July 12, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Heritage Foundation is the group responsible for the controversial “Project 2025.” (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Project 2025 lays much of the blame for undocumented immigration at the door of the Dept. of Homeland Security, which it alleges has done the bidding of a “feckless administration.” Trump, with the assistance of immigration policy architect Stephen Miller, began to clean house at Homeland Security during his presidency. 

“Indeed, the only direct impact of open borders on pro-open borders elites is that the constant flow of illegal immigration suppresses the wages of their housekeepers, landscapers, and busboys,” says Project 2025. 

Despite that “constant flow” of immigrants, job openings in Nevada “remain historically high as small business owners continue to lament the lack of qualified applicants for their open positions,” Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist for the Nevada Federation of Independent Business wrote last week regarding the latest jobs report. “Owners have grown understandably frustrated as attempts to fill their workforce repeatedly stall and cost pressures continue to rise.”

Job openings in the construction sector increased in July over June, and 60% of employers in that field have an opening they can’t fill. Vacancies were highest in transportation, construction, and manufacturing. 

Project 2025 calls for eliminating temporary work programs for immigrants, however, it notes in an “alternative viewpoint” that some conservatives believe temporary worker programs “help to fill jobs that Americans will not fill, prevent illegal immigration by giving farmers and others who hire low-skilled labor access to workers, and keep down the prices of food and other products and services produced by the temporary workers.”

Farmers forced to hire “Americans” may have to “drastically increase wages, raising the price of food for all Americans, and that even such wage increases may not be sufficient” to attract enough temporary American workers. They argue the value in phasing out temporary worker programs, including those for seasonal workers in the hospitality industry, should be weighed against the consequences of higher costs.  

Dreamers in jeopardy

In addition to its mandate to remove undocumented immigrants, Project 2025 seeks to restrict legal immigration by eliminating Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for half a million “Dreamers,” and doing away with family-based immigration such as the Keeping Families Together program, as well as temporary protected status, and visas for victims of crime. It also reduces asylum relief and discounts domestic and gang violence as grounds for seeking refuge in America. 

The program, established by Pres. Barack Obama, was dismantled by Trump but salvaged by the U.S. Supreme Court. Last year a federal judge ruled DACA is illegal. The Biden administration is urging the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the ruling. 12,100 active DACA recipients lived in Nevada as of March 2020, while DACA has been granted to 14,278 people in total since 2012, according to estimates.   

“It’s imperative that we send those people back, invite them back to come through the legal system,” Heritage Foundation president Roberts said of immigrants during an interview  with MSNBC. “We love immigrants and heritage, but we also love the rule of law.”