Host Sharyl Attkinsson interviews former President Donald Trump on Full Measure on Sunday. Photo by Screenshot/YouTube

By Lauren Markoe September 24, 2024

Former President Donald Trump said Sunday that a mass deportation of people in the country illegally could be done quickly because “local police know their names, and they know their serial numbers.”

The comment drew outrage from many who said it evoked the Nazi branding of Jews with numbers during the Holocaust.

“Trump goes full Holocaust,” a headline read on the left-leaning Daily Kos.

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“Does he think this is the Holocaust? Do they have Serial Numbers?,” tweeted one user on X. “This is INSANE!!!!!!!!”

Trump made the remark in response to a question on Full Measure, a talk show that is syndicated by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group. Host Sharyl Attkisson asked if the deportation of millions of people in the country illegally was realistic. 

Trump said it was.

“We’re getting the criminals out, and we’re going to do that fast, and we know who they are, and the local police know their names, and they know their serial numbers,” he said. “They know everything about them.”

Some on social media assumed incorrectly that Trump had said he would “assign” serial numbers to immigrants.  

As one commentator tweeted: “#DonaldTrump has announced that if elected, he will, just as #AdolfHitler did, begin assigning serial numbers to the ethnic groups in the US he doesn’t like.”

Trump did not say he wanted to assign numbers, but referred, as Politico reporter Marc Caputo put it, to numbers immigrants “already have.”

Caputo further noted the Department of Homeland Security already assigns 7, 8, and 9-digit numbers to non-citizens. Those numbers however are not referred to as “serial” numbers, which manufacturers stamp on products.

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