The MAGA movement is reveling in the creativity, severity and accelerating force of President Trump’s historic immigration crackdown.
Once-fringe tactics — an alligator-moated detention camp, deportations to war zones, denaturalization of immigrant citizens — are now being proudly embraced at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
- It’s an extraordinary shift from Trump’s first term, when nationwide backlash and the appearance of cruelty forced the administration to abandon its family separation policy for unauthorized immigrants.
- Six months into his second term — and with tens of billions of dollars in new funding soon flowing to ICE — Trump is only just beginning to scale up his mass deportation machine.
Trump on Tuesday toured a temporary ICE facility in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where thousands of migrants will be detained in a remote, marshland environment teeming with predators.
- MAGA influencers invited on the trip gleefully posted photos of the prison’s cages and souvenir-style “merchandise,” thrilling their followers and horrifying critics.
- Pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer drew outrage after tweeting that “alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now” — widely interpreted as a reference to the Hispanic population of the United States.
Citing the millions of unauthorized immigrants who crossed the border under President Biden, Trump and his MAGA allies have framed the second-term crackdown as a long-overdue purge.
- The result is an increasingly draconian set of enforcement measures designed to deter, expel and make examples out of unauthorized immigrants.
- Some newer members of the MAGA coalition, such as podcaster Joe Rogan, have expressed deep discomfort with the targeting of non-criminal undocumented immigrants.
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Denaturalization of U.S. citizens — once a legal backwater — is gaining traction as Trump and his MAGA allies push the envelope on nativist rhetoric.
- The Justice Department has begun prioritizing stripping naturalized Americans of their citizenship when they’re charged with crimes and “illegally procured or misrepresented facts in the naturalization process.”
- But some MAGA influencers are pushing to weaponize denaturalization more broadly — not just as a legal remedy for fraud, but as a tool to punish ideological opponents.
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https://www.axios.com/2025/07/05/trump-migrants-alligator-alcatraz-denaturalize