President Donald Trump ignited outrage after touring a new federal migrant mass detention site in the Florida Everglades—denounced by some as a modern-day concentration camp—and calling for the deportation of some U.S. citizens who commit crimes.

“I’d like to say it, you know, it’s a little controversial, but I couldn’t care less,” the President began. “We have a lot of bad criminals that came into the, into this country, and they came in stupidly—it was an unforced error, it was an incompetent president that allowed it to happen. It was an autopen, maybe, that allowed it to happen.”

“And it did happen,” he continued, “but we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time, people that whacked people over the head with a baseball bat from behind when they’re not looking and killed them. People that knife you when you’re walking down the street. They’re not new to our country. They’re old to our country. Many of them are born in our country.”

“I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, you want to know the truth,” Trump declared.

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The President’s remarks weren’t idle speculation or musings—they reflect a deliberate and dangerous shift in policy.

“The Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship,” NPR reported on Monday. “Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes — and giving U.S. attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online.”

Critics were aghast at Trump’s remarks.

“Citizens. I’m going to say it again. This is fascism. MAGA can cry all you want but this is exactly what every f—— dictator in history wanted. Wake the f— up,” wrote Fred Wellman, a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School who is now the host of the podcast “On Democracy.”

“Trump claimed he’d focus on deporting immigrants with criminal records,” noted U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA). “Now, he’s indiscriminately targeting all immigrants. So when he says American citizens are next, we should take it seriously.”

“Someone, anyone, please tell me how this isn’t straight up fascist,” urged former U.S. Ambassador Luis Moreno.

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“The American experiment is predicated on the notion that we’re a place where people can disagree & live peacefully together,” wrote Oklahoma Democratic state Representative Forrest Bennett. “He thinks people who disagree with him are ‘bad.’ He’s counting on his supporters to value short term satisfaction over longterm preservation of rights.”

Referring to remarks Trump made in April, Professor of history and scholar of fascism Ruth Ben-Ghiat issued this warning: “‘The Homegrowns Will Be Next,’ is one of the more chilling authoritarian phrases I have heard. This is also why they want to increase ICE’s budget so much.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Trump calls for deporting US citizens: “We also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time … many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that’ll be the next job.” pic.twitter.com/zQDOlqjB3u

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2025

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Image via Reuters

President Donald Trump says he is aware of and supports proposed legislation that would require the federal government to perform a new U.S. Census, by excluding non-citizens. The revised count would be used to immediately reapportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, presumably also for the 2026 election, despite constitutional decennial requirements and the constitutional mandate that all “persons” be counted.

During his first term, Trump tried to add a citizenship question to the U.S. Census, but courts struck down that effort. The Constitution is clear: it states the “whole number of persons in each state” must be counted. Courts have ruled this includes non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants.

Standing with his former presidential primary opponent, Governor Ron DeSantis, in Florida, Trump was told about the “Make American Elections Great Again” bill, which is sponsored by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

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A reporter described the bill to Trump, saying it would force “the U.S. Census Bureau to redo the census to actually get an account of how many Americans with proof of citizenship are in our country, redistricting some of the House districts.”

“I love it,” the President told reporters.

According to Greene, her legislation “will save America’s elections from ever being stolen again!” She added it will count U.S. citizens only, then “direct states to immediately begin a redistricting of all U.S. House seats … using only the population of United States citizens,” despite constitutional parameters that the census must count every person, and be conducted every ten years. Constitutionally, a new census is not scheduled until 2030.

“We want to bring our elections back,” Trump told reporters. “The election in 2020 was rigged—millions and millions of votes,” he baselessly claimed.

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“It had to do with COVID and a lot of things, but it really had to do with the crooked people. The Democrats are very good at cheating in elections,” Trump also alleged.

Governor DeSantis claimed that Florida was “gypped” in 2020 because the census added only one congressional district to his state.

Although the census was conducted when Trump was in office in 2020, DeSantis called it the “Biden census.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Q: There’s gonna be a new bill called Make American Elections Great Again, forcing the Census Bureau to redo the census to get an account of how many Americans w/proof of citizenship are in our country, redistricting some House districts. Thoughts?

TRUMP: We love it. The… pic.twitter.com/p4Sa81ilih

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2025

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Vice President JD Vance, who once cast himself as a champion of rural America and working-class families, emerged late Monday to defend President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” as it floundered during a Senate vote-a-rama—amid critics’ accusations of pork and prejudice. The margin is expected to be so close that Vance is now at the U.S. Capitol to be on hand to cast the deciding vote if necessary.

“The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass,” VP Vance wrote on social media.

Experts have said, and critics have noted, that immigrants actually reduce the federal deficit by about $1 trillion each decade, because of the work they perform and the taxes they pay. Few undocumented immigrants are able to access federal social safety net benefits.

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But it was this tweet that seemed to attract the most pushback:

“Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”

Critics blasted the vice president.

“Here is the vice president of the U.S. saying Trump’s signature bill that kicks ~17M people off of health care, takes food away from poor children, adds $4T to the debt + kills the clean energy industry only really matters because it helps ICE detain and deport brown people,” explained HuffPost reporter Jennifer Bendery.

“Thousands of projected deaths per year is ‘immaterial,'” wrote Vox senior correspondent and editor Dylan Scott.

“Expert calculate that the Big Ugly Bill will kill 51,000 people EACH YEAR,” observed Adam Cohen, vice chair, Lawyers for Good Government. “The CBO determined it will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose Medicaid,” he added.

“Unions charge it will cost millions of jobs,” he continued, “And it will literally take food from hungry kids But-to JD Vance This is immaterial.”

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“JD the argument you’re making is that cutting millions of Americans from Medicaid the next few years will be obviated by enforcing on immigration more. If a certain number of unauthorized people are kicked out, that won’t get people more health insurance. It’s not minutiae,” warned journalist Zaid Jilani.

“The CBO projects that the immigration provisions cost taxpayers more than $125 billion,” noted attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “Meanwhile, Medicaid alone is being cut by nearly $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 trillion), with millions of Americans losing access to healthcare. So impoverish the country for mass deportations?”

“People are rightly noting that kicking millions off of Medicaid is not ‘minutiae’, but the premise is wrong here too,” noted Ernie Tedeschi, former Chief Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors. “Of the reasons to deport undocumented immigrants, federal fiscal health is one of the worst ones. CBO found they *lower* deficits by ~$1T over the next 10 years.”

Economist Tony Annett wrote: “This awful man scapegoats immigrants to defend the largest upward redistribution in history.”

“No, deportations are removing net taxpayers,” warned David J. Bier, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “The GOP is living in an anti-immigrant delusion. Even if you ended all benefits to noncitizens and kept their taxes (my favored approach), it wouldn’t come anywhere close to ending the budget deficit. The threat is population decline!”

“I’ve warned about the nativist mind virus for many years,” Bier later wrote. “They’d destroy the economy, bankrupt the government, shred the Constitution, trample our freedoms, and imprison their own people to get what they want: not just mass deportation, but something more like ethnic cleansing.”

Crain’s Detroit senior reporter Dustin P. Walsh called Vance’s remarks “demonstrably wrong.”

“There is countless evidence illegal immigrants actually boost coffers. You can have philosophical arguments about legal process, etc. but a fiscal argument is just inaccurate,” Walsh added.

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller asked: “If the only thing that matters is the mass deportations…why don’t you just do a bill funding mass deportations?”

“This is what hitting the panic button looks like,” observed Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy.

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This article has been updated with additional comments.

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