The U.S. military is likely to resist former President Donald Trump‘s mass deportation plan, according to legal analyst Joseph Nunn on Sunday, saying that it would undercut other priorities and damage morale.
Immigration is among the top issues ahead of the 2024 presidential election as the country experiences heightened levels of migrant border crossings. There were more than 2.4 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the 2023 fiscal year, up from roughly 1.7 million in 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.
This comes as Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, will face off against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, in November.
Trump has promised mass deportations as part of his election campaign for months, promising to bring in the Army and local law enforcement to remove millions of illegal immigrants.
According to the Associated Press, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said the former president “would marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers.”
Speaking with the AP on Sunday about the implications of the mass deportations, Nunn, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, said military leaders are likely to resist Trump’s plan.
“The military is going to see this and say this is not the kind of duty that soldiers signed up for,” Nunn told the AP. “This is getting the military involved in domestic politics in a way the military doesn’t like to do.”
Nunn warned that while the mass deportation poses difficulties and challenges, it is “potentially lawful.”
“What Trump seems to be contemplating is potentially lawful. There might not be a lot of legal barriers. It is going to be logistically extraordinarily complicated and difficult. The military is not going to like doing it and they are going to drag their feet as much as they can, but it is possible, so it should be taken seriously,” Nunn added.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s campaign and the Department of Defense via email for comment.
Former President Donald Trump is seen in Flint, Michigan, on September 17. The U.S. military is likely to resist Trump’s mass deportation plan, according to legal analyst Joseph Nunn on Sunday, saying that it would undercut other priorities and damage morale.
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP/Getty Images
However, John Sandweg, a senior Homeland Security Department official in the Obama administration, said it would be “nearly impossible” for Trump to implement.
“On a practical level, it will be nearly impossible for (Trump) to do the things he’s talking about, even if could bring in the military,” he told the AP.
Trump has previously said he would focus on deploying the National Guard, whose troops can be activated on orders of a governor. In addition, according to Trump’s chief immigration policy architect Stephen Miller, troops under sympathetic Republican governors would send troops to nearby states that refuse to participate.
“The Alabama National Guard is going to arrest illegal aliens in Alabama and the Virginia National Guard in Virginia. And if you’re going to go into an unfriendly state like Maryland, well, there would just be Virginia doing the arrest in Maryland, right, very close, very nearby,” Miller said last year on The Charlie Kirk Show.
Nunn’s comments come after Trump promised his mass deportation plan would begin in Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado—two cities at the center of anti-immigration talk these past few weeks.
Speaking at a press conference in Los Angeles earlier this month, Trump repeated claims of a Venezuelan gang takeover of Aurora, as well as unfounded accusations that Haitian migrants in Springfield have been eating residents’ pets.
“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump said. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.”
In Aurora, apartment complexes did see problems with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, with members of the notorious group moving in and causing issues for Venezuelan residents and others.
The city’s mayor, Mike Coffman, recently told Newsweek that the story had gotten out of hand and that the gang was not in charge of apartment buildings.
Meanwhile, Springfield city officials have continued to debunk rumors about pet’s being eaten by Haitian migrants, and condemned Trump’s remarks as it has led to threats within the community.
Springfield’s city hall had to be evacuated last week after a bomb threat, which officials said included “hateful language toward immigrants and Haitians in our community,” was sent to it, along with the Clark County courthouse and two elementary schools.
