What did Donald Trump do today?

He once again called for his political enemies to be jailed or deported for being his political enemies. 

Trump visited a hastily built internment camp in the Florida Everglades today, and used the opportunity to threaten to jail or deport at least three of his imagined political enemies by name—all of whom are American citizens.

Zohran Mamdani. The Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City was born in Uganda and became an American citizen in 2018, though he has lived in the United States since he was seven. His shocking come-from-behind victory in the primary over Andrew Cuomo has rattled Trump and other Republicans, who were hoping for a contest between the scandal-plagued Cuomo and Eric Adams, the incumbent. Adams is running as an independent after Trump tried to use Biden-era corruption charges against him as blackmail, and succeeded in getting Adams to align with his immigration policies.

Asked about Mamdani, Trump called him a "communist" and then blurted out, "We'll have to arrest him," adding that "many people" were saying he was not really a citizen. (That accusation may sound slightly familiar coming from Trump, who routinely got confused on the campaign trail in 2024 as to whether it was Joe Biden or Barack Obama who was president at the time.)

Mamdani released a statement later in the day:

 

Alejandro Mayorkas. During his appearances today, Trump took questions exclusively from media outlets within his political comfort zone. Even so, he appeared unsure and unready when a reporter from the right-wing website Blaze asked about Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security under President Biden. The Blaze staffer, Julio Rosas, had to guide Trump to an understanding of who he was talking about. Even then, Trump interrupted himself for hints from his own staff sitting nearby, and could only speak in general terms about how Mayorkas was "bad." Reminded that Mayorkas had been impeached, he called it "fake."

Mayorkas' 2024 impeachment was not "fake" in the sense that it happened, but even the Republican-controlled House that eventually mustered up the votes for it seemed embarrassed by it. The Senate dismissed the impeachment without a trial. Notably, the "charge" was dereliction of duty over a supposed crisis in immigration, but the Biden administration oversaw more removals in 2024 than Trump is on pace to in 2025. (Trump has not called for his own Homeland Security's impeachment, yet.)

Elon Musk. Friendly media also goaded Trump to attack his political patron, Elon Musk, who has come out strongly against Trump's budget bill. A grinning Trump did recognize Musk's name and said he'd "have to take a look" at whether Musk could keep his citizenship. He proceeded to muse out loud that Musk might somehow fall victim to the same government apparatus he'd helped to create to root out Trump's other enemies.

Unlike Mayorkas and Mamdani, there actually would—technically—be a basis in existing American law to denaturalize and deport Musk. As his own brother Kimbal has publicly acknowledged, both Musk siblings worked illegally in the United States after overstaying their student visas, then presumably lied about it during the naturalization process.

This denaturalization process is virtually never used. Musk is one of a number of people in Trump's inner circle who would technically be at risk. Others include both of Trump's foreign-born wives. Melania Trump worked illegally as a model before being naturalized, and then used her own citizenship to sponsor her parents, who—as elderly and unemployed dependents—Trump had to use his authority as President to cheat the rules for anyway. (In other circumstances, Trump and other nativists refer to this as "chain migration.") The late Ivana Trump broke Czechoslovakian law by entering into a sham marriage with her first husband in order to gain entry into the United States, which would also have made her citizenship theoretically revocable.

Trump, a convicted felon 34 times over himself, is himself the descendant of people who dodged and cheated immigration laws, but his own citizenship is secure by virtue of being born on American soil, unless he gets his way and changes that.

Why does this matter?

• Making your political enemies "unpersons" is what happens in dictatorships, not democracies. 

• No matter how much he wants it to be, it's not a crime to be someone Donald Trump doesn't like.  

• Presidents who don't want to be too closely associated with Nazis shouldn't talk about stripping citizens of their rights while touring a brand new concentration camp.