Donald Trump’s first presidential term, from 2017 to 2021, seems almost benign compared to the violence and dislocation of the present. That first term failed to deliver much more than the garden-variety conservative policy suite of tax cuts, deregulation, and culture war reaction, though the combination of Trump’s chaotic governing style and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult to assess whether this failure reflected a lack of capacity or a lack of will to deliver on the MAGA promises of political and economic disruption. This second term, so far, suggests it was the former. The absurdities of Trump’s communication style and his highly personal, clientelistic mode of governance remain, but they are now accompanied by a more coherent staff that operates with a greater focus and command over the machinery of the state. In just one year, they have aggressively pushed through policies that demonstrate a real ambition to remake the American state and its place in the world.

As in the first term, immigration has been at the center of much of this activity. The flow of migrants, particularly the undocumented and those seeking humanitarian relief, has been declared a national emergency, justifying the reappropriation of state resources and the derogation of basic constitutional rights. There has been an alarming intensification of immigration enforcement, both through the exponential increase in funding for the relevant agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the expansion of partnerships with local law enforcement.¹ The invocation of a national emergency has also enabled the Trump administration to deploy military troops in immigration enforcement actions, both at the southern border and in American cities. Immigration enforcers, often masked, have become the assault troops of this new Trump era, seizing people off the street in a manner that seems intended to maximize violence and shock value. And even though Trump’s campaign rhetoric had focused on immigrant criminality and warned of a massive expansion in border control and deportations, the policies enacted since his inauguration have been far more draconian than anything we might have expected. Nearly half of all the immigrants detained in the past year have never been convicted of or even charged with anything other than an immigration violation.² In addition, a slew of policy changes have closed legal pathways to migration and rescinded legal status from migrants who currently have it, shutting down refugee and asylum programs. The administration has also gone after citizens, increasing rates of denaturalization and attempting to end birthright citizenship for children of noncitizens born in the territorial United States. The administration’s stated goal now is to produce, both directly and through the self-deportation of a terrorized immigrant population, a mass exodus of millions.

How far can this go? While the racism of this campaign might appeal to a hard core of nativists, to the general public the immigration policy has been sold as a solution to the country’s economic and social woes. These are the same grounds that have been used to justify most of the administration’s policies, whether deregulation, DOGE reforms, or tax cuts for the wealthy. These other interventions, however, differ from the deportation policy in that they present clear, obvious benefits for capital. Mass deportation, in contrast, seems to be in direct conflict with the interests of employers in sectors where immigrants are a key source of low-wage labor — employers who were key early constituents of the Trump coalition.³ Moreover, it’s not even clear that the constituents mass deportation purportedly protects — American workers — would actually benefit. While there might be short-run wage gains in occupations where immigrants are predominant, productivity and wages in the economy overall would be negatively impacted by mass deportation, as the competencies immigrants bring to the labor market tend to complement rather than substitute for those of native-born workers.⁴ It is a policy that cannot work. Ultimately, it is no different than the immigration policies that have come before. Although their brutality and terror have increased exponentially, the deportations are unlikely to fundamentally change how the American economy exploits its immigrant underclass. It will only succeed in intensifying that exploitation.