Donald Trump announced on Monday that he will declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants on day one of his incoming administration.
“TRUE!!!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform in response to a right-wing activist about deploying the U.S. military to round up and deport immigrants.
It’s a moment many Democratic governors have been preparing for.
“You come for my people, you come through me,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a post-election press conference, referring to minority communities in his state who experienced the “chaos, retribution and disarray” of Trump’s first term.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey told MSNBC on Nov. 8 that she will “absolutely not” cooperate with Trump’s deportation plans.
“The key here is that every tool in the toolbox has got to be used to protect our citizens, to protect our residents and protect our states, and certainly to hold the line on democracy and the rule of law as a basic principle,” Healey added.
But many Americans might wonder: How exactly will Democratic governors go about this? What state protections are in place to keep federal border agents out of their cities, neighborhoods, and homes?
Last week, Trump announced militant immigration Cabinet picks, such as former Acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan, who was named “border czar.” Homan helped enforce Trump’s family-separation policy and recently said there will be “shock and awe” regarding immigration on day one.
Immigration and civil rights advocates are pushing Democratic governors to act quickly on legal protections. They have urged them to sign executive orders or pass new laws to protect immigrants before the administration takes office on Jan. 20.
“They will militarize the execution of arrests to strike the most fear in migrant communities,” Naureen Shah, the ACLU's deputy director of government affairs, said in a call to reporters. “The goal is to show the brutality.”
In an analysis by HuffPost, Democratic governors have only a few options to push back against mass deportations. This includes the ability to sign “an executive order directing state personnel not to voluntarily provide any information that could be used for federal immigration enforcement,” HuffPost writes.
The caveat? Sheriffs can go outside this sort of sanctuary-city jurisdiction. “ICE could reach out directly to sheriffs and ask for information on a particular undocumented immigrant or for help in setting up a traffic perimeter to check people’s driver licenses, and the sheriff could decide to cooperate,” writes HuffPost.
This means “governors in the strongest position to counter Trump’s mass deportations are those with state laws explicitly barring local and state law enforcement from coordinating with the federal government to identify, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants,” reports HuffPost.
But this law has been passed in only two states: Oregon and Illinois.
Democratic governors recently formed a new organization called Governors Safeguarding Democracy, which will enable them and other state officials to collaborate, sharing resources and information across state lines. Pritzker, one of the group’s leaders, claimed that even some unnamed Republicans have expressed interest in joining forces with them.
As Trump’s plans for mass deportations move closer to becoming a reality, Democratic governors mount a defense—toothless or not—of immigrant rights and state sovereignty. While the legal and political landscape to combat the second Trump era remains complex, the efforts of Healey and Pritzker, alongside advocacy from the ACLU, signal a unified resolve to protect their states’ residents.
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