How one border-state Dem is bracing for Trump’s mass deportation operation
”The emphasis will be on cruelty as public policy,” Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar told Once Upon a Hill in an interview.
First Things First
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill. Within hours of Donald Trump winning a second term last week, a campaign spokesperson was on Fox News confirming the president-elect’s campaign promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants would begin on the first day of his administration.
Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), who represents El Paso, a city in the western part of the Lone Star State situated on the Rio Grande and opposite the Mexican town of Ciudad Juárez, told me on Tuesday that she met with her legislative team this week to plan how her office will respond to a second Trump administration.
“And one of those issues [we discussed], obviously, was the mass deportation policy that Trump is going to implement, and we know that with [incoming border czar] Tom Homan and [incoming deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor] Stephen Miller leading the way, that the emphasis will be on cruelty as public policy,” she said. “I suspect my district office will be inundated with calls from lawyers and family members wondering what to do, and we really do have to prepare for the worst. I hope the worst doesn’t happen. I do hope the incoming Trump administration recognizes the vulnerability of families and children and parents and people whose only crime—if you want to call it that—was coming to the country without papers.”
Escobar said despite her hopes that Trump is more bark and less bite on immigration and while national groups are working on a coordinated response for when he takes office, vulnerable communities should brace themselves.
“I also do think families need to have the most direct conversations internally about what they will do should something awful happen to a parent or a child,” she told me. “We can’t just live on the hope that it won’t happen to families because it will. And so families need to be having those conversations that are going to be very painful and challenging. But at a national level, we’ve got to prepare.”
Escobar, who was just elected to a fourth term, expressed disappointment that too few Democrats were willing to embrace bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform—a misstep that ceded ground to Republicans who exploited the southern border crisis and demonized undocumented immigrants to explain why the cost of living remained too high.
She told me she was attacked by Democratic colleagues when she introduced the Dignity Act of 2023, a package that would open additional pathways to citizenship and grant legal status to undocumented immigrants already living in the US with the possibility of earning citizenship. The proposed legislation also establishes new pathways for asylum seekers, economic migrants and unaccompanied minors while ending “catch-and-release,” creating new regional processing centers, funding the hiring of additional border agents and requiring employers to the immigration status of individuals using an electronic employment eligibility confirmation system modeled after the E-Verify system. (Rep. María Elvira Salazar of Florida is the lead Republican sponsor of the bill.)
“The idea that if we hold out long enough, one day, we’ll get everything that we want on immigration is a fantasy,” she said. “And it’s more harmful than anything else.”
The details and cost of Trump’s mass deportation operation remain murky, but the obscurity is sort of the point. The mere fact that he has instilled fear within those at risk of removal and inspired hope among those
The closest window into the practicalities is within Project 2025, the 900-page policy blueprint the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation developed for a second Trump presidency. Trump distanced himself enough from the plan to avoid a political cost in the election. However, 140 former Trump administration officials or allies contributed to it—including the two men Trump tapped to shape his administration’s immigration policy.
Project 2025 proposes empowering Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use “expedited removal,” a process normally only used near the border. Its widespread use raises significant concerns within immigrants’ rights groups about due process against immigrants found anywhere within the country since it would enable raids in sensitive zones like schools, hospitals and religious institutions.
It also suggests using military forces and equipment to secure the border, imposing tougher laws to limit crossings and building more border wall—all of which could lead to humanitarian crises near the border. The plan also aims to expand immigrant detention facilities to hold up to 100,000 people and enforce more mandatory deportations. It seeks to end protections for groups like Dreamers and Ukrainians fleeing war, repeal Temporary Protected Status for nearly 700,000 immigrants, and reduce visa categories. Additionally, it would expand the error-prone E-Verify employment verification system and increase state and local involvement in federal immigration enforcement, penalizing those who do not comply.
A recent Data for Progress poll found most Americans tend to support the idea of deporting criminals and new arrivals but oppose the sweeping removal of immigrants who have US-born children, own a small business, are covered by TPS or are seeking asylum.
Related read: “How Trump’s “mass deportation” plan would ruin America” by Isabela Dias
Here’s what’s happening today:
The House will meet at 10 a.m. with first and last votes scheduled at 1:45 p.m.
The Senate will meet at 10 a.m. with two votes at 11:30 a.m. to confirm Cathy Fung to be a Judge of the United States Tax Court and David Huitema to be Director of the Office of Government Ethics. A second vote series is scheduled at 1:45 p.m. to limit debate on the nomination of Embry Kidd to be US Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit.
President Biden will receive his daily press briefing this morning and then travel to Lima, Peru. Biden’s weekend travel schedule:
Friday: The president will hold a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea and a bilateral meeting with President Dina Boluarte Zegarra of Peru.
Saturday: President Biden will participate in a greet with President Zegarra, participate in the APEC summit and take a family photo with APEC leaders. He will also hold a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping of China.
Sunday: The president will leave Peru en route to Manaus, Brazil. He will then take an aerial tour of the Amazon before giving a statement to the press. Biden will travel from Manaus to Rio de Janeiro.
Vice President Harris will be in Washington, DC, where she will receive briefings and hold internal staff meetings.
Do you have questions about the lame-duck session or the incoming Trump presidency? Drop me a line at michael@onceuponahill.com or send me a message below to get in touch and I’ll report back with answers.
In the Know
Republicans have officially won enough seats to keep control of the House, an achievement that will give the party unified control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency. House Democratic leaders accepted the election results while praising members for outperforming the Harris ticket and holding most of the caucus’s frontline districts.
Senate Republicans elected John Thune to be their next leader. The South Dakotan will Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in US history, and is expected to navigate a three-vote majority to shepherd President-elect Trump’s legislative agenda and cabinet and judicial appointments through the upper chamber. The Senate GOP also elected John Barrasso of Wyoming as Senate Majority Whip, Tom Cotton of Arkansas as Senate Republican Conference Chair, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia as Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair, James Lankford of Oklahoma as Senate Republican Policy Committee Vice Chair and Tim Scott as National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was unanimously renominated to be the top House Republican by his colleagues due in part to full-throated support from President-elect Trump and private negotiations between the GOP’s conservative bloc and business-minded centrists over House rules in the next Congress. Johnson’s next test: Secure 218 votes in January to officially keep his gavel. House Republicans also reelected House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson (R-NC) and House Republican Conference Vice Chair Blake Moore (R-UT) to their roles while adding House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-MI), House Republican Conference Policy Chair Kevin Hern (R-OK) and House Republican Conference Secretary Erin Houchin (R-IN) to Johnson’s leadership team. House Democrats will hold their leadership elections next week.
President Biden and President-elect Trump met at the White House for two hours—a public demonstration of Biden’s commitment to a peaceful transfer of power in January. The two leaders were cordial during brief public remarks despite their well-documented distaste for each other. White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and incoming White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles also attended the meeting.
Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced a bill to help veterans and their families qualify for home loans through the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Home Loan Fairness Act would remove childcare expenses from debt-to-income ratio calculations when veterans and their families apply for VA home loans. These loans include several benefits, such as no down payment, no private mortgage insurance requirement, lower interest rates and limited closing costs.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) met senior Biden administration officials this week—including Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland—to advocate for clean air and water safeguards, disaster relief funding and public land protections in the final two months of Joe Biden’s presidency.” The leaders want the Environmental Protection Agency to expedite approval of several pending waivers to protect the state’s climate and emissions rules, FEMA to reimburse $5.2 billion to state and local governments spent for emergency relief in response to the pandemic and the Interior Department to designate outstanding national monuments.
The Democratic Women’s Caucus set a new record for Democratic women serving in the House with the addition of Rep. Erica Lee Carter (D-TX) as its 95th member. Lee Carter was elected to complete the term of her mother, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX).
President Biden met with the families of Americans taken hostage by Hamas to update them on his administration’s efforts to secure their release. Biden was asked about a potential deal between Israel and Hamas on Tuesday ahead of a meeting with Israeli President Michael Herzog and gave the inquiring reporter a quizzical answer: “Do you think you can keep from getting hit in the head by a camera behind you?”
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