Trump vows ‘largest deportation operation in American history’

Donald Trump has made a huge claim about what will unfold on his first day in office on January 20, 2025.

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday pledged to commence “the largest deportation operation in American history” as soon as he takes office on January 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.

Donald Trump has vowed big things on his first day in office. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

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 designer 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 January 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.”

Trump said it will be the biggest deportation in US history. Picture: Herika Martinez / AFP

In another move, Trump kicked off a daylight savings debate after he took to X to declare his plan to axe it completely.

Mr Trump, who will become president of the United States again in January, has attacked the daylight savings system.

In America, daylight savings begins in March, when clocks are set ahead one hour, and ends on the first Sunday in November.

In Australia, it works much the same for the states that use it. Daylight savings begins on the first Sunday of October and ends on the first Sunday of April.

The Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia don’t bother with daylight savings at all.

He has even said he might consider keeping TikTok. Picture: Antonin UTZ / AFP

Daylight savings was first implemented by Germany in 1916 to conserve energy and power during World War 1, and then Europe and the United States followed suit.

The idea was pretty simple.

If there was more daylight during the hours people are typically awake, there’d be less need to use power resources. The added bonus is that people would get more recreational time to enjoy sunlight.

The system has existed for decades, but Mr Trump has vowed to change it.

“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate daylight saving time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t,” he wrote.

“Daylight saving time is inconvenient, and very costly to our nation.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced here with permission.

Originally published as Trump vows ‘largest deportation operation in American history’