Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Trump’s Mass Deportation Regime

About this episode

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick discusses the implications of the Trump administration's mass deportation policies.

“The US government wants to arrest, detain, and deport one in every 24 people in the country—4% of the US population. That cannot be done without fundamentally transforming who we are as a people and our relationship to law enforcement.” So argues Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a leading expert on immigration and Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a bracing Conversation on the scale and scope of the Trump administration's mass deportation mission. Reichlin-Melnick shares his perspective on the administration’s massive political and financial investment in deportation and detentions, which already have reached record levels. Kristol and Reichlin-Melnick also consider the implications of these policies for legal immigration, civil liberties, the nature of American law enforcement, and the character of American society.

People in this episode

Host: Bill Kristol

Guest: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

Topics covered

• immigration
• deportation
• law enforcement
• civil liberties
• American society
• Trump administration

Keywords

• mass deportation
• immigration policy
• Trump
• civil liberties
• law enforcement
• American society

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: American Immigration Council

More episodes of Conversations with Bill Kristol

• Ron Brownstein: What’s Going To Happen in 2026? · June 11, 2026 · 1h 6m
• Aaron Friedberg on Fallout from the China Summit · May 20, 2026 · 49 min
• Phillips O’Brien on Ukraine v. Russia and the Future of Warfare · May 8, 2026 · 1h 7m
• A.B. Stoddard on Trump’s Psyche—and The Implications for 2028 · April 23, 2026 · 1h 4m
• Mark Blitz on the Enduring Importance of Aristotle · April 9, 2026 · 56 min
• Aaron Friedberg on the Iran War and the View from Beijing · March 19, 2026 · 1h 21m