Trump could do mass deportation. We’ve done it before.

A FEW DAYS AFTER the Republican National Convention ended, New York Times he published article in which officials who served in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations were quoted questioning the political, logistical and legal viability of the Republican Party platform proposal calling for mass deportation of illegal immigrants. The tone of the article and the views of the experts quoted spoke to a pre-Trump mentality about what the former president and his minions could do. Laura Collins, an immigration expert at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, said Times“It’s an extremely complicated and expensive matter to make a decision to deport people who have been here for years.”

However, historical examples indicate that the introduction of forced relocation, internment and deportation is not as unlikely as some experts believe.

Consider the Alien Friends Act of 1798, which, as lawyer and legal historian Wendell Bird notes in his book Criminal oppositiongave President John Adams and his successors “practically unlimited power” to “select and deport aliens.” The passage of the act caused many French citizens living in America and innocent of any crime to be deported before they were formally placed under the Adams administration. As Bird explains, “Although these deportations were not ordered under the open terms of the Alien Act, they took place because of that act and would not have taken place but for it.”

Bird documents how others were targeted for deportation and expulsion—in every known case, the reasons were unclear or spurious. The chilling effect on freedom of speech and association was profound and ultimately provoked a political backlash that hastened the downfall of the Federalist Party.

But that experience did not discredit the idea of ​​politically motivated deportation, relocation, or expulsion. Less than forty years later, another president would use federal power to drive entire groups of people more than a thousand miles from their land and homes.

In this case, tens of thousands of American Indians were relocated, sometimes literally at gunpoint. As University of Georgia historian Claudio Saunt recounts in The Unworthy Republic: Indian Dispossession and the Road to Indian Territory“The United States subjected the American Indians to a formal state-administered process that produced censuses, property lists, land plans, removal records, exchange certificates, and the like, all culminating in a journey by foot, wagon, or steamboat to lands west of the Mississippi.” Saunt estimates that internal removals and relocations involved more than 80,000 American Indians, with thousands dying in the process. Over the next six decades, the U.S. Army subjugated the descendants of the relocated people and eventually herded them onto reservations.

The 20th century saw widespread federal action against disadvantaged ethnic or immigrant communities. The Alien Enemy Act against non-naturalized German immigrants During World War I, the government was allowed to intern German-Americans in facilities across the country. This also fueled general anti-German sentiment, leading to violence against German-Americans and attempts to suppress German-language newspapers and discourage German-language religious services. After the war, the infamous “Palmer Raids” led to thousands of arrests in the United States, mostly of Italian and Jewish immigrants, some of whom at least 556 people were deported.

The most famous anti-immigration program in American history based on ethnic division was Internment of Japanese Americanswhere about 120,000 people were imprisoned during World War II, mostly in the western United States. Lesser known: Some German Americans AND Italian Americans were also interned and some deported to their home countries. From the outbreak of the war until the Cold War, the FBI also maintained specific letters thousands of Americans who were suspected—because of their political affiliation, ethnicity, or cultural affiliation—of sympathizing with the Axis powers or the Soviet Union for potential emergency arrest. Significantly, these programs did not always clearly distinguish between American citizens and foreigners.

The closest historical analogy to what Donald Trump and the Republican agenda are proposing is the Eisenhower era. Operation Wetbackwhich led to the detention of over a million illegal immigrants, as well as several American citizens of Mexican origin, and the voluntary departure of tens of thousands of people under pressure from the government.

Participation

THESE EPISODES BELIEF the idea that the executive branch in a second Trump administration would not be able to carry out mass internments or deportations. The government has done so in the past when the nation’s transportation infrastructure and law enforcement community were much smaller than they are today.

Former President Trump and his advisors understand that he failed to carry out mass deportations during his first term, so they plan to bypass all the usual restrictions on deportations. They are already invoking the broad authority of the Alien Enemy Act, immigration authorities in Title 8 United States Code, health exclusion eligibility under Title 42 of the United States Code, and The Act on the establishment. These powers could provide Trump (or another executive branch chief) with legal cover to carry out a mass deportation operation. And in cases where it seems like the law might get in the way, it’s worth remembering that courts have repeatedly shown a reluctance to check the executive’s power over immigration.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel could be called upon to issue an opinion that a particular presidential immigration action is constitutional. Such an opinion would be binding and provide legal protection to executive branch personnel involved in carrying out deportation actions, even if they were later found to be illegal or even criminal.

So in a second term, the biggest challenge to Trump’s mass deportation agenda is likely not to be legal but logistical and financial: Will he have the money, staff and detention infrastructure to deport millions of people across the country?

One or both Democratic-controlled chambers of Congress could refuse to approve any appropriations bill that would fund a mass deportation program. If such funding were part of the annual Homeland Security funding bill and the Democratic-controlled chamber refused to pass it, the effect would be to shut down DHS—but the confrontation would not end there.

Trump has explain that he would use the U.S. military to assist with any mass deportation program if necessary. If, in the event of a DHS funding shutdown, he and congressional Republicans were to move forward with an annual Defense Department appropriations bill with funding and direction for DoD to assist with mass deportations, such a move would force Democrats to decide whether halting Trump’s mass deportations is worth the political firestorm that would erupt over the lack of funding for the U.S. military.

Alternatively, if Trump retakes the White House and the GOP controls Congress in 2025, Trump could get all the resources he needs to implement his plan. Even if Congress shuts him down, Trump would likely try to simply redirect military funds for immigration purposes when did with the financing of his “wall” in 2019.

If that happens, opponents of such a program may find themselves with no way to stop what will quickly become one of the darkest chapters in American history.

Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow for homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute, is a former CIA analyst and former senior policy adviser to Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.).