Trump Allies Find Their Inspiration for Massive Deportation Campaign

Project 2025 associates shared new details Friday about their plans for an expansive immigration crackdown—including mass deportations—under Trump. The group’s focus on immigration seeks to have executive orders and policy memos ready for use on day one of a second Trump presidency, undoing portions of Biden’s immigration policies and setting the stage to realize Trump’s desire to mass-deport up to 20 million people

According to details shared to The Wall Street Journal, Trump allies have found one of their main sources of inspiration for the giant deportation campaign: the U.K. Rwanda plan. The group is working to identify countries that would accept people deported from the United States, much like a similar effort between the U.K. and Rwanda, which is currently mired in legal entanglements.

Trump allies are also working out ways to make asylum hearings move faster to speed up deportation eligibility and remove deportation protections created by Biden that would impact hundreds of thousands of people.

These new details of Project 2025’s agenda were revealed by The Wall Street Journal simultaneously with similar revelations shared with Reuters about Project 2025’s aspirations to neutralize the Department of Justice’s independent investigative authority and convert it into a conservative attack dog. Combining its efforts to alter the Department of Justice with legally murky mass-deportation initiatives could present an authoritarian dynamic that removes legal impediments to actualize its deportation goals.

Project 2025 is a coalition effort of conservative groups that seek to dismantle long-standing frameworks of democracy to turn the U.S. into an ultranationalist, hyperconservative, authoritarian society. While its objective prioritizes a Trump presidency, the coalition operates independently from the Trump campaign. Leading Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation, a heavy hitter in conservative policymaking, and the America First Policy Initiative, a newer group that has been described as “just a grift.”

Trump’s campaign has denied associations with efforts being crafted on behalf of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, with Trump senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita telling both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal: “Unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official.”

LaCivita and Wiles claim details made public of Project 2025’s efforts to streamline Trump’s conservative agenda ahead of the election are “an effort to prevent a second Trump administration.” Neither adviser rebuffed the aspirations behind Project 2025, which are being crafted in line with Trump’s public statements regarding mass deportations and the Department of Justice.