‘Explicit’ cruelty: inside Project 2025’s plans ‘to whiten America’

immigration's been a political SP flasho for decades now it's one of the most complex issues that our nation faces today as we try to Grapple with all of the geopolitical economic and social factors at play for the last three elections Donald Trump has make made villainize IM IM villainizing immigrants Central to his campaign message his two major promises on immigration are to build a wall and to carry out the largest deportation operation in the history of the country now it comes as no shock that project 2025 immigration policy also Echoes Trump's promises the far-right manifesto

puts forth sealing the border and it seeks to do so with military force let's turn to page 166 page uh chapter 5 it wants the Department of Defense to quote assist in aggressively building the border wall system on America's Southern border including using military personnel and Hardware to prevent uh illegal Crossings between ports of entry and Channel all crossborder traffic to Legal ports of Entry okay but project 2025 goes much much farther than that people can agree that you should be able to control your border but not only does project 2025 aim to close the

border and to militarize the Border it aims to use every lever of government to F detain and Deport undocumented people going so far as to take funding and housing away from people who are just associated with undoc dented immigrants look at this recommendation it's uh to the Department of Education on page 167 it wants the Department of Education to quote deny loan assistance to those who are not US citizens or lawful permanent residents and deny loan access to students at schools that provide instate tuition to ilal aliens we don't use that word that's their language

but let me just tell you this is crazy project 2 wants to take away student loan eligibility for students with legal status or who might be American citizens who simply attend a school that might confer Financial intuition benefits upon undocumented immigrants there's more project 2025 wants to Bar US citizens from qualifying for federal housing if they live with anyone who is not a US citizen or legal permanent resident specifically calling out Mixed status families it wants to force states to share driver licenses and taxpayer identification information with Federal authorities in order to find undocumented individuals

and threaten to revoke critical funding to states that don't comply it wants to use uh data from FEMA the Federal Emergency Management agency data to enforce immigration control and think about that you're an undocumented immigrant and a hurricane comes your way you go to FEMA to to get temporary housing and then you get swept up into into the federal immigration system data that is supposed to be used for major disasters it wants to bring back child and family detention and increase the national capacity for those detention centers I could go on but project 2025 doesn't

just go after undocumented people or illegal immigration it would actually even severely limit legal immigration which we know to be an imperative in this country an economic imperative it would effectively terminate the legal status of 500,000 dreamers the percentage of Americans who think dreamers should have legal status in this country is way above 80% but project 2025 would take status away from dreamers it would use the existing backlog of cases to suspend most legal immigration it would limit the number of h2a and h2b temporary worker visas that would cause critical gaps in the agricultural industry

the construction industry the hospitality sector and the forestry sector it would even reduce the number of H1B highly skilled worker visas ask your doctor if you got a doctor who's not from America what kind of Visa they're on it's probably an H1B it would significantly Li limit the number of T and U visas you probably don't know what those are but they're the Visas that are given to victims of human trafficking violence and abuse human trafficking violence and abuse we're targeting them too let's remember the context here Trump and the Republican Party have for a

decade now made the amorphous threat of immigrants a central rallying point Trump constantly accuses Democrats of having Reckless dangerous open border policies which led in immigrants which Trump calls Vermin who in Trump's words poison the blood of our country but remember Donald Trump loyalists in Congress killed the modern era's strongest effort at border control project 2025 is immigration proposals are not going to fit fix anything at all it simply lays out all these plans to reduce legal and illegal Pathways into the United States to slow down our already in uh incredibly backlogged immigration system to

weaponize every branch of the government to round up millions of people some of whom have been here for most of their lives and who collectively we rely upon for our economic growth and in many of our most critical Industries let's be really clear project 202's immigration policies aren't even trying to fix anything they break what is already a broken system by using TCT tactics that are punctuated by cruelty but that's the point when the rhetorical strategy of fear-mongering of our broken system has worked for you fixing the problem is not going to be your objective

cruelty when it comes to immigration is the point cruelty has always been the point our coverage of project 2025 continues and will continue um I told you before the break about project 202's cruelty forward plan to seal the southern border to carry out Mass deportation operations to weaponize almost every branch of the government in order to do so for more on this I'm joined by the award-winning journalist Paula Ramos she is an MSNBC contributor she's a former deputy National director of Hispanic media for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign she's the author of the important upcoming

book defectors The Rise of the Latino far right and what it means for America comes out next month and we're going to have her back to talk about that very specifically um Paula I I you know migration whether it's forced or voluntary is The Human Condition there's perhaps no greater description of what happens we all know and you know very specifically because you've spent time at the southern border we know there's an issue we know there's got to be a better way and some of that's on our side and some of that's On the Border

Side none of nothing in here solves literally anything no that's going on no not at all in fact it's it's not a policy proposal it's not a there's no fact BAS Solutions it is all based on this idea of what they have to do to widen America right and so I think it's important to take a step back and to understand who penned the immigration section right right let's go back to the name Ken Cinelli Ken Cinelli everyone may remember former Trump Administration official top figure in the Homeland Security Department he is the person that

genuinely believes in ending Birthright citizenship right he is also the person that in 2019 tried to literally rewrite the Statue of Liberty poem and I mentioned it because it goes to the heart of what we're seeing in those words in 2019 he essentially inferred that these words give me your poor and you're tired that those words were specifically referring to European immigrants right to white people to people that could only come to this country if you had privilege if you had access and money right not talking about black and brown immigrants and the man that

penned the immigration section is also the one that you mentioned push forward the public charge role essentially prohibiting legal immigrants not undocumented immigrants but legal immigrants from accessing public benefits basic housing basic healthare so I I say all this because to your point we're not talking about policy right we're talking about a distorted vision of America that tries to do one thing and that is how do we preserve the whiteness of this country and that's what that's about and and the whole thing started with that didn't start obviously but but with as it released to

Donald Trump he came down the elevator and talked about uh Mexicans in in 2015 as being rapists he talks about them as as talks about immigrants as Vermin he talks about people uh as poisoning the blood of our nation but he also talks about wanting more immigration from Norway uh and stuff like that there are by the way there's no net immigration from Norway to the United States so you're not getting your immigrants from Norway but it is this concept that that U that we are building a border and a protective Force to protect the

Vermin who poison the blood of our country from coming in exactly and I think project 2025 isn't just about building on the Trump White House right I think it's it's also this idea that in the last four years trumpism has seen President Biden they've seen in their face this humanitarian crisis they've seen the great replacement Theory suddenly go from being a French Theory to being normalized and so project 2025 is in many ways the manifestation of that deep Cobia now of the of the most vulgar aspect of this anti-immigrant sentiment and I think we need

to understand what what does that mean yeah if Trump walks into the White House you know come January but what happened is ice would have complete access everywhere across the country including schools and hospitals and churches places that have been deemed sacred spaces um you would see local law enforcement being deputized to become like is Agents we wouldn't currently against the law that's they can't do that exactly against the law we wouldn't just be seeing deportation censors we would be seeing camps literal T cities that aren't just holding undocumented immigrants but also children which you

pointed out but people have to understand children would be held in these 10 cities to your point TPS would be slashed working visas would be restricted to in their words just the best and the brightest what does that mean right I don't know because because I think there a whole bunch of undocumented people in this this city Who deliver our and make our food there a whole bunch of undocumented people who pick our uh produce there are a whole bunch of undocumented people in every industry in this country in their eyes the best and the

brightest are European immigrants and when we talk about sealing the Border it's not just that we'll see the rise once again of Trump's wall they will be institutionalizing Romanian Mexico policy essentially completely gutting the Asylum system and once again reframing sort of what the American ethos is supposed to be all right and if you if you there are fixes for the Asylum system absolutely including having more more people in the system that can evaluate Asylum Seekers can process them and that's part of our problem we just don't have that actually happening there are fixes yes

you've thought about them you've studied them th they're not in here that what what is in that book Alan you do such a great job at at educating us that is none of that is based on facts right what we're seeing in Project 2025 is all rooted in fearmongering it it is all rooted in this idea that immigrants and migrants are criminals and they're dangerous and in This Racist narrative that they're lazy and so you love facts let's tell people the facts immigrants are not criminals according to Stanford University natives us native citizens are more

likely to commit crimes and there's a massive disincentive to commit a crime if you're an immigrant of course but also statistically it's just happen immigrants are also not lazy they pay billions of dollars in taxes I mean you can go on and on but the point here is they're explicitly trying to be cruel yeah explicit and that unfortunately is what it is but we need people to know this because if you cast your ballot a certain way this is a 180-day implementation plan from January 20th this is not a long-term thinking about immigration this is

a plan to deport people create camps uh and and do all the worst things that we do e