WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union today released a new report, 76 Ways Mass Deportation is Breaking Our Democracy, detailing how the Trump administration is using mass deportation as the pretext and mechanism to attack civil liberties and structural democratic safeguards at an unparalleled scale and speed. The report comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests have hit a record high, as the Trump administration has shifted its approach from mass raids to more discrete arrests following widespread outrage. From the deployment of federal agents and military troops for immigration enforcement in U.S. cities, to the mass revocation of visas and other forms of lawful status, and the targeting of immigrants’ rights protesters, the Trump administration has repeatedly used immigration policy as a trojan horse for attacks on core pillars of U.S. democracy. Notably, the report categorizes the dizzying array of abuses into three major categories, which often overlap: Attacks on civil rights and liberties, as the Trump administration has used mass deportations as both a pretext and distraction for its assault on myriad constitutional rights – including the rights to free speech and freedom of assembly and due process – impacting citizens and noncitizens alike. Attacks on democratic checks and balances, as the administration expands its federal deportation police and executive power, eviscerating due process for immigrants and normalizing ICE’s violence, while evading and even defying court orders. Attacks on multiracial, pluralistic democracy, as the administration continues to gut existing legal protections and introduce new policies targeting people who are immigrants – including through visa and entry bans and efforts to end birthright citizenship and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) – in what appears to be a calculated attempt to change the racial makeup of the U.S. now and into the future. “For the past year and a half, the ACLU and advocates have warned that the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda pulls straight from an authoritarian playbook – and now, we’re seeing the devasting impacts of those policies, with citizens and noncitizens alike paying the price and the state of our democracy in crisis,” said Naureen Shah, director of immigration policy and government affairs at the ACLU. “This report is a clarion call to members of Congress to strengthen and repair our pluralistic, multiracial democracy by passing meaningful immigration reforms. That must include creating a broad path to citizenship for immigrants who contribute to our communities and our economy.” Within the report, the ACLU also calls on members of Congress to restore and defend democratic rights and norms through transformative immigration reform, including by creating a broad path to citizenship and modernization of border processing and policies. It also calls on lawmakers to build stronger accountability, transparency and oversight measures to effectively compel the executive branch to uphold civil rights and civil liberties. “From the cancellation of Congressionally mandated protections like TPS to the arrest of noncitizen students for exercising their First Amendment rights, the Trump administration has repeatedly violated bedrock democratic principles under the guise of immigration enforcement,” said Sarah Mehta, deputy director of immigration policy and government affairs at the ACLU. “As this administration has shown, no one is safe from its extreme mass deportation agenda. Our elected officials – and the state of our democracy – cannot afford to allow this lawlessness to continue. The time to act is now.” This report is the fourth in the ACLU’s affirmative immigration vision series, in which policy and legal experts explore how the Trump administration’s immigration agenda has harmed communities nationwide, undermined our democracy, and wreaked havoc on key industries and weakened the American workforce. The series will also outline steps that members of Congress, as well as state and local policymakers, can take to reform the U.S. immigration system and inoculate against future attacks on core rights and safety. You can read the full report here: https://www.aclu.org/publications/76-ways-mass-deportation-is-breaking-our-democracy