Newsweek

Steve Bannon's Fever Dream of an American Gulag

The White House wants to build dozens of new jails for up to 2 million people along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Multiple layers of steel walls, fences, razor wire and other barricades are viewed from the United States side of the of the U.S.-Mexico border on January 26, in San Ysidro, California. President Donald Trump has ordered work to begin on building a wall along the Mexican border, angering his southern neighbor.
Mexico border wall

UPDATED | Imagine: Miles upon miles of new concrete jails stretching across the scrub-brush horizons of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, with millions of people incarcerated in orange jumpsuits and awaiting deportation.

Such is the fevered vision of a little-noticed segment of President Donald Trump’s sulfurous executive order on border security and immigration enforcement security. Section 5 of the January 25 order calls for the “immediate” construction of detention facilities and allocation of personnel and legal resources “to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico” and process them for deportation. But another, much overlooked, order signed the same day spells out, in ominous terms, who will go.

Related: Twitter users plead: 'Stop President Bannon'

Trump a week after the November elections that he would expel or imprison some 2 million or 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions—a number that exists mainly in his imagination. (Only about 820,000 undocumented immigrants currently have a criminal record, according to the Migration Policy

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Newsweek

Newsweek16 min readWorld
‘We Are Facing The Most Complex Security Environment Since World War Ii’
SHORTLY AFTER RETURNING FROM HIS FIRST LEAD-ers-level visit to Washington, D.C., Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sat down with Newsweek for an exclusive interview in his Tokyo office to discuss the main takeaways from his trip, as well as the h
Newsweek13 min readWorld
Red Cows, Gaza And The End Of The World
IT IS SAID THAT THIS IS WHERE THE WORLD began—and perhaps where it will end. The true epicenter of the war in the Holy Land is not the devastated Gaza Strip, under Israeli assault since Hamas’ bloody raid last October sparked the region’s deadliest c
Newsweek1 min read
Living On The Edge
An 18th-century cottage clings to the precipice following a dramatic cliff fall in the coastal village of Trimingham on April 8. The homeowner, who bought the property in 2019 for around $165,000, will now see the structure demolished as the saturate

Related Books & Audiobooks