Deport One Million Immigrants – USA
If Donald Trump is re-elected as president, he has promised to deport many people who are in the United States without legal permission. His campaign has mentioned different numbers for how many could be deported, but his vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, gave one number in an interview with ABC News this week. He said, “Let’s start with one million.” He also criticized Kamala Harris, saying she had failed in this area.
However, experts say that even though this idea is important to Trump’s campaign, there are big legal and practical problems with deporting so many people.
What are the legal challenges?
There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., a number that hasn’t changed much since 2005. Most of these people have lived in the country for a long time, with nearly 80% being here for more than ten years.
Even though they don’t have legal status, these immigrants still have the right to a court hearing before they can be deported. Mass deportations would likely require a big expansion of the immigration court system, which already has a lot of cases waiting to be heard.
Most immigrants who are already in the country end up in the deportation process not because of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents but because of local law enforcement. However, many large cities and counties have laws that limit how much local police can work with ICE.
The Trump campaign has promised to go after these “sanctuary cities,” but the mix of local, state, and federal laws makes this difficult. Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, said that cooperation between ICE and local officials would be a key part of any mass deportation plan. She explained that it’s easier for ICE to pick someone up from jail if local police cooperate, rather than having to find them on their own.
For example, in early August, sheriffs in Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach counties said they wouldn’t help with any mass deportation efforts. According to Ms. Bush-Joseph, many other local officials would likely refuse to cooperate as well, making mass deportations much harder.
A mass deportation program would also likely face many legal challenges from immigration and human rights groups. However, a 2022 Supreme Court ruling means that courts cannot block immigration enforcement policies while these challenges are being resolved, so the deportations could continue even during legal battles.
But can it be done, logistically?
Even if the U.S. government could legally move forward with mass deportations, it would face huge logistical challenges.
Under the Biden administration, deportations have mostly targeted migrants recently caught at the border. Migrants deported from deeper inside the U.S. are usually those with criminal records or seen as national security threats. Raids on workplaces, which happened during Trump’s presidency, were stopped in 2021.
For the past decade, fewer than 100,000 people arrested inside the U.S. have been deported each year, a sharp drop from over 230,000 during Obama’s early years. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy director at the American Immigration Council, told the TWT that raising this number to one million in a single year would need a massive amount of resources that likely don’t exist.
ICE, with its 20,000 agents and support staff, is unlikely to have enough manpower to track down and arrest the large numbers being suggested by Trump’s campaign. The deportation process is complicated and doesn’t end with an arrest. Detainees need to be housed or placed in alternative programs while they wait for an immigration judge, in a system already facing long delays. Removing them from the U.S. also requires cooperation from the country they are being sent to. Reichlin-Melnick noted that ICE doesn’t have the capacity to handle millions of deportations.
Trump has suggested using the National Guard or other military forces to help with deportations, although the military’s role in immigration has mostly been limited to support at the U.S.-Mexico border. Beyond this, Trump has not provided many details on how such a large-scale plan could be carried out. In a Time magazine interview, he said he might consider building new detention facilities and giving police immunity from prosecution by liberal or progressive groups. He also mentioned offering incentives to police departments that participate in the plan, while those that don’t “won’t partake in the riches.” Trump insisted that mass deportations are necessary for the country.
The Trump campaign did not provide additional comments when contacted by the TWT.
Eric Ruark, the research director at NumbersUSA, a group that supports stricter immigration controls, said that any effective deportation program would also require stronger border enforcement. Without it, little progress would be made inside the country. Ruark also emphasized the need to crack down on companies that hire undocumented migrants, as they come to the U.S. mainly for jobs, which are available due to weak enforcement inside the country.
The Financial and Political Costs
Experts estimate that deporting a million or more people could cost tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars. In 2023, ICE had a budget of $420 million for transportation and deportation and deported just over 140,000 people. Expanding this effort to reach Trump’s goal would require detaining thousands of immigrants while they wait for court hearings or deportations. The Trump campaign has suggested building large camps to house them.
To deport so many people, the number of removal flights would need to increase significantly, potentially requiring the use of military aircraft. Even small expansions in these areas would come with high costs. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy director at the American Immigration Council, noted that even minor changes could cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and major changes could cost much more.
These expenses would be in addition to other border enforcement efforts Trump has promised, like continuing work on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, creating a naval blockade to stop fentanyl from entering the country, and sending thousands of troops to the border.
Adam Isacson, a migration and border expert from the Washington Office on Latin America, warned that “nightmarish images” of mass deportations could be politically damaging. He suggested that seeing people, including those loved by their communities, being deported would create “incredibly bad press,” comparing it to family separation but on a larger scale.
Have Mass Deportations Happened Before?
During Trump’s previous four years as president, around 1.5 million people were deported, both at the border and from within the U.S. The Biden administration, which had deported about 1.1 million people by February 2024, is on track to match that number.
During Obama’s two terms, more than three million people were deported, leading some immigration reform advocates to nickname him the “deporter-in-chief.”
The only historical comparison to a mass deportation program is from 1954 when up to 1.3 million people were deported during Operation Wetback, a program under President Dwight Eisenhower. However, this figure is disputed by historians. The program faced significant public opposition, partly because some U.S. citizens were mistakenly deported, and it suffered from a lack of funding, leading to its discontinuation by 1955.
Immigration experts say that comparing Operation Wetback to a modern-day mass deportation is misleading. Kathleen Bush-Joseph of the Migration Policy Institute pointed out that the 1950s program mostly targeted single Mexican men. Today, most undocumented migrants come from countries other than Mexico or northern Central America, making deportation more challenging. As a result, the situations are not truly comparable.
Published: 16th Aug 2024
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