Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald Trump's political career for nearly a decade now.

His first presidential campaign was largely about building the wall to keep people out.

In 2024, the focus has been on sending back immigrants who are already here.

He's promised the largest deportation in history, millions of people potentially, and it starts on

day one, according to Trump. Stephen Miller said the administration would unleash the vast

arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.

A deportation policy on this scale would have enormous impact, not only on the lives of

immigrants, but on their communities, on the U.S. economy, and much more.

To understand what's really possible come January, I'm joined by staff writer Jonathan Blitzer,

who's the author of Everyone Who Is Gone is Here,

a definitive account published this year of the immigration crisis in America.

Jonathan, before we get into the prospect of the Trump administration and a potential deportation,

I want to ask you if you think looking back on the now completed campaign,

if the Democratic Party got immigration wrong, if the Biden administration ignored it for too long, as has been

the critique all along from the Republicans. I definitely think the Democrats and Biden specifically

miscalculated in thinking that if they put their heads down and didn't talk about this,

the issue would somehow pass or it would kind of dissolve in the general ether.

And so they didn't really—

Why would they do that?

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