Trump Vows to Invoke 1798 Law to Handle Illegals as Part of ‘Largest Deportation Operation in US History’

Former President Donald Trump this week said that if he is elected president next year, he would invoke a 1798 law to expel illegal immigrants and launch major deportation operations.

“Following the Eisenhower Model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said during a speech in Dubuque, Iowa, according to Fox News. According to ABC, a program to remove illegal immigrants that took place during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s resulted in the deportation of about 1 million illegal immigrants.

“I will bring back the travel ban and expand it even further to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country,” Trump said, referring to a ban he instituted to limit entry into the United States from several Muslim-dominated countries.

Trump said that his goal is to keep those seeking to undermine America out of the country.

“I will also use existing federal law to deny entry to all communists and Marxists to the United States,” he said, adding, “Those who join our country must love our country — and we are going to keep foreign Christian-hating communists, Marxists, and socialists the hell out of America.”

Trump framed the 2024 presidential election as “our final battle.”

“With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country, we will rout the fake news media, we will defeat Joe Biden, and we will end illegal immigration once and for all,” Trump said.

Trump has said his approach will make America safer.

“I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act, which most people have never heard of, to remove all known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States, ending the scourge of illegal alien gang violence forever,” he said in a June speech, according to a video posted on social media.

The Alien Enemy Act is part of the Alien and Sedition Acts approved in 1798. It was used in World War II by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to observe and detain Japanese, German and Italian nationals according to NBC.

Trump’s Iowa speech came during a week when more than 45,000 encounters with illegal immigrants have taken place along the Southern border. Fox News reported that in August there were about 230,000 illegal immigrant encounters in August, which would be the highest number for the year and up from more than 180,000 in July.

That led Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona to give Trump’s proposals an emphatic second.

[I]t’s actually gonna have to be necessary,” he said, according to Just the News.

“Because by the time Trump gets back in office, you will have had over 10 million, in my opinion, over 10 million illegal aliens cross our border and come into the country, under the Biden regime,” he said.

More than 6 million illegal aliens have entered the country since Biden took office, Just the News reported.

During his Iowa speech, Trump said he would “shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement,” shift “thousands of troops currently stationed overseas to our own southern border,” and use the Navy to  “impose a full fentanyl blockade on the waters of our region — boarding and inspecting ships to look for fentanyl and fentanyl precursors,” according to Fox News.

In August, Axios noted that Trump’s plan would designate drug cartels as “unlawful enemy combatants,” which would allow the U.S. military to act against the cartels in Mexico Trump also wants to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, extend the floating barrier Texas has installed on the Rio Grande River and complete construction of his border wall.