Greetings all. I sat down late yesterday afternoon with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. Aaron is one of our most thoughtful commentators about immigration and border security, and I am pleased to be able to bring our conversation to you. A video recording is above and a rough transcript is here.
I asked Aaron to come by after reading his excellent Bluesky thread detailing what we are now learning about ICE’s dramatic expansion of his detention centers.
Aaron takes us through what he knows today about the Trump regime’s mass deportation strategy and why a planned expansion of these detention centers is so central to this dark plan. In our discussion he references a new report he co-authored with a wealth of data and historical perspective, Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump’s Second Term. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to do a deeper dive in this detention center complex the regime is trying to build.
Here’s the conclusion to the report’s Executive Summary:
With the Trump administration effectively eliminating three immigration oversight sub-agencies and prohibiting members of Congress from conducting lawful inspections, the detention system and the abuses endemic to it are more opaque than ever before. The problems with conditions in ICE detention are likely to grow only worse over the next four years. Families and adults disappear into detention in one state and reappear thousands of miles away – or in another country following a rapid deportation. While a flood of habeas corpus lawsuits has prevented some injustices, the majority of people do not have the resources or the ability to fight ICE’s choice to detain.
This interview will help you come to a better understanding of why “detention” is so central to the regime’s mass deportation strategy and its terror regime, and why they are moving so ferociously now to dramatically expand these centers in the months ahead.
Here’s a recap of that the polling data we discuss throughout the piece showing how little appetite there is for mass deportation in the US today:
We got this new data this morning from Democratic polling firm GBAO:
Our discussion will also confirm why we need to be working so hard to rein in ICE; stop the violence and the lawlessness; to force DHS to focus on criminals and leave the rest of us alone; and to block the expansion of these inhumane and dangerous detention centers.
Keep working hard all. We are having the big fight about ICE we all wanted to have. Now, we need to win it, together - Simon
Bio - Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. He previously worked as a Staff Attorney at the Council, working on impact litigation, Freedom of Information Act litigations, and practice advisories. Prior to joining the Council, he was an Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow placed as a Staff Attorney at the Immigration Law Unit of The Legal Aid Society in New York City, representing immigrants placed in removal proceedings because of a prior criminal conviction. Aaron holds a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in Politics and East Asian Studies from Brandeis University.
