Chaos at the border is the top issue for Republicans, and their likely nominee promises to launch what he calls “the largest domestic deportation operation in history.”

Aides are reportedly scouting land for detention camps, and Donald Trump and his allies have not been shy about calling for the invocation of the Insurrection Act of 1807 to allow the military and federalized National Guard troops to assist in what they envision as a mass removal of undocumented immigrants.

If such a plan were carried out, it would cause enormous disruption to communities throughout the country and increase the weight of the federal government in people’s lives in a way that runs counter to a political party that supposedly prides itself on small government.

The plan, presented in broad strokes, is “super cruel and also completely impractical,” says Lanae Erickson with Third Way, a centrist progressive group.

During Trump’s term in office, his highest number of deportations was 267,258 people in 2019, and now he’s claiming that if elected to a second term, he would purge the country of some 10-12 million people here illegally. While expelling 16 times the number that he initially achieved just once during his time in the White House is wildly impractical and deeply disruptive, Erickson told The Daily Beast, “He absolutely is going to try, and it’s incumbent on us to think through the kind of reality........

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