Krugman:
Look, what they would like is self-deportation,
and they can certainly try to do that.

I do think that that’s going to be harder.

Among other things, where are people going to go?

The idea that Latin American countries are going to cheerfully accept millions of people flooding back across the border is probably going to be a lot harder than they think.

We aren’t the only people with agency here.

Also, the anti-immigrant stuff,
it’s not really about legality.

It’s just about people who are non-Anglo.

And a lot of the people have roots here.

It’s not that they can just pick up and go back to their old life in Central America.

They’ve been here for years. -- They have families.

So this is going to be much, much harder to make happen than they think.

And maybe they back off, but ...
I’ve been looking a little bit of a dress rehearsal for some of this in DeSantis Florida,
where he’s done a crackdown.

The results for Florida agriculture have already been disastrous.

You might’ve thought that the business backlash would cause him to back off,
but he hasn’t.

So I would take all of this stuff very, very seriously
#MassDeportation #WhiteSupremecy #MagaMilitia

Krugman:
Yeah. Just bear in mind that a lot of what may happen,
beyond the deportations,
may not require government actions.

If you want to intimidate people, you don’t necessarily have to send in the military,
which might refuse to obey orders.

You can just do ...
January 6 was basically tacit permission for MAGA extremists to go and do stuff.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see quite a lot of that happening as well

#MassDeportation #WhiteSupremecy
#MagaMilitia

Krugman:
What is this thing you call legal obstacles?

It’s not clear to me that rule of law is going to apply at all in the years ahead.

It’s very likely that they’ll just find ways to do it.

Of course, the costs are ...
If you try to do these draconian policies in any remotely humane way,
they’re very expensive.

Well, the obvious next sentence follows, right?

If you’re really prepared to be quite brutal,
and basically build tent cities in the desert,
maybe not so expensive.

Krugman:
This has happened before, right?

Not so extreme as this one,
but Obama laid the foundations for a pretty strong economy during Trump’s first term.

Bill Clinton basically balanced the budget, preparing the ground for George W. Bush to blow it on tax cuts.

It’s a recurring theme.

Although, I have to say, maybe I’m being too cynical or insufficiently cynical, the idea of really deporting immigrants
—not just claiming, "We have built a wall", but actually doing the thing
—seems to be something that is really close to Trump’s heart.

That seems to be something he really, really wants to do.

I think about Stephen Miller;
he doesn’t just want to go after low-wage migrants from Latin America.

He wants to go after high-skilled executives in Silicon Valley
because this idea is that there are these jobs and they should be going to Americans.

I would be surprised if they actually back off on this.

They’ll go quite a ways, and business community will scream.

A lot of people in business believe that this is all going to be a Potemkin deportation,
that it’s not really going to happen,
but they’re probably wrong about that.

#MassDeportation
#WhiteSupremecy