Americans can expect a 15-million-person deportation operation and implementation of programs designed to monitor women who violate abortion bans if Donald Trump wins another White House term in 2024.
Trump is ready to reshape American policy and detailed in interviews with TIME Magazine what some of these sweeping overhauls would include.
In a wide-ranging interview at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida on April 12, the former president confirmed he would use detention camps to house illegal immigrants during deportation efforts.
He also didn’t rule out deploying the military to round up the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country. As of January 2022, the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. was estimated to stand at 11.35 million.
Trump has repeatedly said he would take aggressive actions to address the border issue on Day One of a second term after President Joe Biden reversed almost all of his policies and plunged the country into an all-out illegal immigration crisis.
His proposals would include tapping local law enforcement, 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 states the U.S. military cannot be deployed against civilians.
‘Well, these aren’t civilians,’ the former president replied. ‘These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion like probably no country has ever seen before.’
‘They’re coming 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 isn’t likely he would have to house these immigrants in detention camps because he plans to deport them swiftly – but he didn’t rule out building more holding centers if needed during the operation.
‘No, I would not rule out anything,’ Trump said. ‘But there wouldn’t be that much of a need for them [detention camps], because of the fact that we’re going to be moving them out. We’re going to bring them back from where they came.’
Since Biden took office, the U.S. has seen record-high numbers of illegal border crossings.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has apprehended more than 7.6 million migrants illegally crossing the southern border – the majority of which are traveling from Central and South American countries in efforts to claim asylum in the U.S.
Trump took a rather luke-warm position on abortion earlier this month when he released a video claiming he does not support a federal-level ban because the issue should be decided by individual states.
But he wouldn’t say one way or the other if he would veto a bill on a federal abortion ban if it came across his desk in a second term and said it’s highly unlikely any sort of legislation on this matter would make it to his desk because it would require 60 votes in the Senate.
‘I won’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.’
Additionally, the former president didn’t say whether he would oppose states implementing programs to monitor women’s pregnancies in an effort to prosecute mothers if they are found to violate abortion laws.
‘Do you think states should monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion after the ban?’ Cortellessa asked the 2024 Republican candidate.
Trump replied: ‘I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.’
‘Look, [overturning] Roe v. Wade was all about bringing it back to the states,’ he added. ‘And that was a legal – as well as possibly in the hearts of some, in the minds of some – a moral decision.’
The 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court decided in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that the federal government does not have the constitutional ability to decide whether women can or cannot terminate her pregnancy. The ruling overturned a nearly 50-year precedent set by Roe v. Wade that set protections nationwide for women’s right to an abortion.
Trump admitted that a lot of Republicans don’t know how to properly talk about abortion, but said overturning Roe took ‘tremendous pressure off everybody’ in the federal government in giving the issue back to the states.
He also said some states are going further than he would personally like, but that it would be decided by voters in respective states where to go on the issue.
For example, Florida is looking to implement a ban that would make it illegal to receive an abortion after six weeks, which is sometimes earlier than a woman may find out she is pregnant.
Some call these proposals the ‘heartbeat bill’ because six weeks is usually when a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
The campaign manager for President Biden’s reelection campaign, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said Trump’s remarks to TIME make clear that ‘if elected he’ll sign a national abortion ban, allow women who have an abortion to be prosecuted and punished, allow the government to invade women’s privacy to monitor their pregnancies, and put IVF and contraception in jeopardy nationwide.’
‘Simply put: November’s election will determine whether women in the United States have reproductive freedom, or whether Trump’s new government will continue its assault to control women’s health care decisions,’ she added in a statement on the interview.
Multiple other topics were discussed in the interview, including the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Trump says his name for those who rioted at the Capitol that day are ‘J-6 patriots.’
He also admitted he would have a hard time hiring anyone for his potential administration that believes President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.
The former president’s interview will appear in TIME’s May 17 issue, which will include a cover with a black and white image of Trump sitting on a stool and scowling at the camera with, ‘If He Wins’ written in white across the cover.
