President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday pledged to commence “the largest deportation operation in American history” as soon as he takes office on Jan. 20, 2025, and mused about keeping TikTok around as well.
“On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign a historic slate of executive orders to close our border to illegal aliens and stop the invasion of our country,” Trump proclaimed to a friendly crowd at Turning Point Action’s AmericaFest conference in Arizona.
“And on that same day, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than that of President Dwight D Eisenhower,” he added.
Throughout his 2024 campaign, Trump, 78, had vowed to undertake a mass deportation campaign against illegal immigrants residing within the US. He has tapped Tom Homan as his border czar designee to carry out that mission. Homan spoke earlier at the conservative conference.
Trump also crowed about his strong performance with young voters for a Republican candidate and credited TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is facing a Jan. 19, 2025 deadline to either divest or face a ban of the popular video-sharing platform on the Google and Apple app stores in the US.
“I think we’re going to have to start thinking about TikTok,” Trump said. “We did go on TikTok. We had a great response with billions of views…and it was so beautiful to see.”
“I said, we got to keep this sucker around a little while.”