Veteran NBC correspondent Julia Ainsley’s new book details the political strategy, internal clashes, and constitutional questions surrounding the Trump administration’s push for what critics called the most aggressive deportation operation in modern American history.
A new political book examining the inner workings of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is already fueling intense debate across Washington and the national media landscape.
In Undue Process: The Inside Story of Trump’s Mass Deportation Program, Julia Ainsley delivers a deeply reported account of how top officials inside the Trump White House allegedly coordinated one of the most sweeping immigration enforcement efforts in modern U.S. history.
The book, released May 5, 2026, centers on the administration’s efforts to expand deportation operations, accelerate removals, and dramatically reshape federal immigration enforcement. Ainsley reports that senior administration figures—including Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and former acting ICE Director Tom Homan—pushed aggressively to create what supporters described as a long-overdue border enforcement strategy and what critics condemned as an unprecedented expansion of executive power.
Drawing from interviews with officials inside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, Ainsley portrays a White House focused on speed, deterrence, and political messaging as immigration became one of the defining issues of the Trump presidency.

