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Immigration advocacy groups and Democratic leaders are seeking to disrupt President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants by pre-drafting lawsuits that could be filed as soon as he takes office.
Trump has vowed carry out what he calls „the largest deportation operation“ in the country’s history, and has pledged to reinstate and expand his controversial ban on people coming into the U.S. from certain majority-Muslim countries as part of his immigration policy.
On Monday, he re-emphasized on Truth Social that he is prepared to declare a national emergency and use military assets to carry out his promise of mass deportation.
Several immigration advocates and Democratic leaders they have spent months preparing for the prospect of another Trump presidency and the expected crackdown on immigrants that Trump and his newly tapped border czar Tom Homan have promised.
Homan, who has embraced Trump’s pledge to undertake mass deportations on „Day 1“ of the new administration, oversaw the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) during the Trump administration’s „zero tolerance“ enforcement that separated parents from their children at the border.
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„In California, we’ve been thinking about the possibility of this day for months and in some cases, years, and been preparing and getting ready by looking at all of the actions Trump said he will take“, California Attorney General Rob Bonta .
Bonta said his team has prepared briefs on several immigration issues that Trump mentioned on the campaign trail. including mass deportations, birthright citizenship, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and sanctuary cities.
„There will be pain and harm inflicted by him. It is not all avoidable, but to get to our immigrant communities in ways that are in violation of the law, they’re going to have to go through me, and we will stop them in courts using our legal tools given to us“, Bonta said.
The California attorney general claims that 80% of the state’s legal challenges against the immigration executive orders and policies from Trump’s first term were successful.
