Thread by @rerutled

Trump is not planning these concentration camps for immigrants caught at the border -- he's planning them for people arrested in their homes, schools, and places of work in an attempt to eject all people from the country who are here without a visa ("illegaly").

A thread.

.@TIME reported Trump regime planning for 119,000 beds/spaces in these concentration camps. time.com/5319334/navy-d… How does that compare with the arrest rate at the border?

ht @monaeltahawy

This number of beds - 119,000 - is completely excessive to handle border arrests. The border arrest rate is approximately 350,000 annually, and has been for 6 years. Source: statista.com/statistics/329…

Furthermore - there is no evidence the inflow of immigration is increasing- it has been decreasing since 2008. The "sudden pulse of immigration" does not exist. So there's no need for such an overkill of 119,000 beds to handle border arrests, based on historical data.

Now, I remind you of this, from Sept 2016: "Trump’s latest plan would target at least 5 million undocumented immigrants for deportation". Trump campaigned on deporting all undocumented immigrants from the US. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…

When Trump talked in September 2016 about deporting 5M-10M undocumented immigrants, within 18 months of taking office, it was fully discussed that this meant snatching people from their homes, their schools, their churches, their places of work. Everywhere.

By Oct 6 2016, Trump was saying "I will deport 16M [undocumented immigrants] in my first 18 months in office." And I calculated in this thread, that to do so, they would need to build camps housing 400,000 people

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And here we are, just learning that they already have a plan in place to build camps on military bases to house 119,000 people - which won't be enough to deport 16M in 18 months, but would be enough to deport 5M in 18 months.

So I conclude: these camps (of 119K beds) are not for people arrested at the border -- they are too large for that. These camps are for people who are going to be snatched by ICE from their homes, their schools, their churches and their places of work. time.com/5319334/navy-d…

In September 2016: "Trump promised to deport millions during first hour in office'. theguardian.com/us-news/2016/s…