Here's the relevant part of the transcript. Sorry for the length. I cut out a lot of it.
I tried talking to Tom Homan. He's rumored to be the next ICE director under Trump but has denied there's a written plan for mass deportations. And he ghosted me. Jason Houser, however, was eager to talk. He was the chief of staff for ICE under Biden for a couple years, has been working for DHS on and off since 9/11, mostly in enforcement.
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Jason thinks that, first of all, the new Trump administration will immediately start to prep for this-- like, the day after the election, this week. They would start talking to law enforcement in different cities and getting them to agree to cooperate, hit the ground running in January. ICE would talk to home countries to get them to agree to take people back. And after those two things align, Jason says, ICE could decide to deport someone and they'd be out of the country within 24 hours.
Jason Houser
I think the first 90 days is going to be hell. You're going to see the buses. You're going to see the migrants in your home-- not just blue cities, red cities-- Miami, Houston, Charlotte-- like, red states-- Kansas City, St. Louis.
You're going to see kids not in your schools. You're going to know where they're at because they're waiting in a detention cell and they have cell phones. You're going to see it in social media. You're going to see businesses not be able to open up because their workers didn't show up. You're going to see businesses being raided. And it's going to become more intimate.
This isn't going to be about separating a family at the border, that somebody doesn't know that family member. You're talking about separations and movements in your communities where you're going to know the guy-- Bill, Juan, Luis. You're going to know the individuals.
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Nadia Reiman
Do you think there would be raids, then, in the first 100 days?
Jason Houser
I think there would be raids within the first three weeks.
Nadia Reiman
Really?
Jason Houser
Yeah. Those are not hard to turn on. Like, to operationalize those, those aren't hard.
Nadia Reiman
Where? Where would they do them?
Jason Houser
You would go back to where there's big ICE and Customs and Border Protection resources to do enforcement. And you would do them in communities that would show the most cruelty. So there's nothing that would stop a Trump administration from going into the workplace, going into our hospitality sector, going into restaurants or businesses, and arresting individuals at scale.
Nadia Reiman
Can you walk through what that would look like? What do you think that would look like?
Jason Houser
Well, I think it would be very easy to focus on industries that have large numbers and high numbers of migrants working within them. What would stop them from going into a meat processing plant in Virginia? Say there's a couple hundred migrants. There's 80 on shift that day. You go in, you know there's one individual there that has a final order of removal, maybe has a nonviolent criminal background.
You go in, you do the raid, you line all the workers up, and you start checking status of each and every one of them, right? Or maybe you just arrest them all, bring them into detention, and then do the checks to see who is removable. There's nothing that could stop ICE, at that point, from just bringing people into custody, detaining them, and then figuring out who is removable at that time.
Nadia Reiman
Tom Homan has not denied this, by the way. He's said publicly something like this would be necessary. Homan also said he would do national security threats first-- but then raids, sure. Jason says the raids under a 2.0 Trump administration could be more militarized, with SWAT-style teams. That's not how they've been done in the past. He also told me he thinks nothing would stop ICE from going into hospitals or schools or churches. Normally, ICE doesn't do that. But this is just a policy, not a law.
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Nadia Reiman
At the end of the 100 days, how many people do you think will be gone?
Jason Houser
Let's just say this. Let's say all rules are out the-- and I can remove people that aren't removable. Like, I'm going to send them to third-party countries. ICE has 48,000 people in its custody now. ICE has 14 ICE planes that are hardened planes. They hold 135-- 135 souls. I need more of those. But while I'm sending those 48,000, I'm probably going to go out and bring another 50,000 to 100,000 into custody. So if you're talking 30 to 60 days, you could remove 150,000 to 200,000 people.
Nadia Reiman
So 200,000 people in the first 60 days?
Jason Houser
Yeah.
Nadia Reiman
So in the first 100, that puts you at what, how many?
Jason Houser
If all rules are gone and I can remove them anywhere, you could do a million.
Nadia Reiman
A million people. Of course, Jason's predicting here, assuming there will be no major roadblocks. But the Brennan Center did this thing where they stress tested with experts and government people whether mass deportations could be done, gamed this all out. In their simulations, funding was a big obstacle right away, so their deportation numbers weren't as large as Jason's.
But that was also assuming that the House wouldn't go Republican, which is looking like it will be as I record this. That would make Jason's math of a million people more possible.
