‘Cannot be a show or a slogan’: Powerful conservative groups think Trump should step up his deportation plan

A group of conservative organizations is launching a coalition to push the Trump administration to take its deportation agenda to the next level.

The Mass Deportation Coalition, to be officially unveiled on Wednesday, calls on President Donald Trump to fulfill his campaign promise of executing the largest deportation operation in history by focusing on the removal of most illegal migrants from the country. The group is pledging to release a comprehensive plan on how to achieve at least one million deportations throughout 2026.

“In order for the President to fully achieve his signature campaign promise of the largest deportation operation in American history, enforcement must now shift from the limited subset of criminal illegal aliens, towards a much larger population of those illegally present in the United States,” Mark Morgan, who formerly led both Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“That is the only path to put integrity back into the immigration system and to push back against selective enforcement demands coming from Congress,” Morgan continued. “This coalition stands to support those efforts, even as special interests viciously oppose them.”

The Mass Deportation Coalition is calling on the Trump administration to better utilize worksite enforcement and provide more transparent data on deportation numbers. A dramatic increase in self-deportations would take place if the administration cracks down harder on deportations, the group argues.

“Focusing the bulk of removal resources on a small subset of the removable population results in small removal numbers,” the group’s website states, criticizing the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) “worst of the worst” policy. “Instead, the Phase Two focus should be on populations that are easier to remove such as deportable aliens with final orders of removal and visa overstays, and policies like worksite enforcement.”

The group boasts as coalition partners some of the most well-known organizations involved in immigration enforcement advocacy, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Immigration Accountability Project, Heritage and a slate of others. Businessman Erik Prince is also listed as a member of the newly formed coalition.

“Seventy-seven million voters gave President Trump a mass deportation mandate,” RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, another coalition partner, told the DCNF. “It’s time to move to Phase Two: ramp up deportations by targeting the most efficient and equally important populations — those with final orders, visa overstays, and those found via aggressive worksite enforcement, where unscrupulous employers are held accountable too.

“Mass deportation cannot be a show or a slogan,” Hauman continued. “It must be executed at scale to protect public safety and defend American workers.”

More than 605,000 deportations had taken place since Trump re-entered office, DHS announced in December. Adding in the roughly 1.9 million self-deportations that occurred during this same time period, the administration declared that 2.5 million illegal migrants altogether had left the country during Trump’s first year back in the White House.

The Mass Deportation Coalition is launching at a time when more Democrats than ever are calling on ICE to be completely abolished.

The Trump administration is being pushed by the left to rein in its deportation agenda following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota this past January. Democrats on Capitol Hill, many of whom have expressed support for abolishing ICE altogether, are withholding DHS funding until key demands are met from the agency, including coordination with local officials and signed judicial warrants before making certain arrests.

The biggest names in border security, however, believe the Trump administration has just gotten started.

“That is the only path to put integrity back into the immigration system and to push back against selective enforcement demands coming from Congress,” Morgan told the DCNF. “This coalition stands to support those efforts, even as special interests viciously oppose them.”

The Mass Deportation Coalition’s website will maintain a Deportation Tracker that will allow the public to assess the administration’s progress. The group expects to release its one million deportation plan by April 1, presenting their playbook directly to Trump and engaging with policy leaders, such as Border Czar Tom Homan and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott.

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