What Would It Take to Deport Millions of Immigrants? The G.O.P. Plan, Explained
2024/07/19 Leave a comment
Good long read on the practicalities and virtual impossibilities of doing so. Any such efforts would of course be divisive, disruptive, costly and likely only partially successful (like the partially completed wall in his presidency):
When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he vowed to build a wall to seal the border and keep criminals from entering the country. This campaign season, his immigration agenda has a new focus: a mass deportation program unlike anything the country has seen.
His party’s platform, ratified at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, promises the “largest deportation effort in American history,” and immigration was the theme of Tuesday’s gathering.
What would it take to deport millions of people? Is it even possible?
How many undocumented immigrants are in the country?
There were 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States in 2022, according to the latest government estimates, and more than eight out of 10 have been in the country for more than a decade. Mr. Trump said during the debate last month that there were 18 million, which is unsubstantiated.
Fleeing political and economic turmoil, migrants from countries like Venezuela have crossed the border in record numbers during the Biden administration.
Who would be targeted for deportation, and how easy would it be to remove them?
Mr. Trump and the Republican platform have made broad declarations but thus far offered scant details about their intended operation.
The former president has suggested that any undocumented immigrant is subject to removal.
The party platform states that “the most dangerous criminals” would be prioritized.
It also said: “The Republican Party is committed to sending illegal aliens back home and removing those who have violated our laws.”
The consensus among immigration experts and former homeland security officials is that logistical, legal, bureaucratic and cost barriers would make it virtually impossible to carry out the mass deportations Mr. Trump seeks in the span of a four-year presidential term.
“It’s enormously complicated and an expensive thing to decide to deport people who have been here years,” said Laura Collins, an immigration expert at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.
Currently, ICE agents focus on locating and deporting convicted criminals, such as child molesters and others suspected of being a threat to public or national security.
Some one million immigrants with final removal orders living in the country could be a targeted group.
“Let’s say you find these people. You then have to detain them,” said Mr. Neifach. “How are you going to expand detention in a way that won’t blow the bank?”
Every potential deportee is held in a detention facility, and in the current fiscal year, Congress funded the detention of 41,500 immigrants daily at a cost of $3.4 billion, which would need to increase exponentially.
And many immigrants hail from countries that do not have diplomatic ties with the United States or that refuse to take back their nationals. They cannot be immediately flown out of the country, and the Supreme Court has ruled that people cannot remain detained for limitless periods awaiting removal.
The ICE budget for transportation and deportation in fiscal 2023 was $420 million, and the agency deported 142,580 people that year.
Where is there room for Trump to accelerate the pace of removals?
Another Trump administration could speed up deportations by terminating programs that the Biden administration has introduced.
For example, since 2022, some 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been allowed to fly to the United States and live and work for two years, provided they have a financial sponsor. Mr. Biden has also allowed nearly 700,000 migrants who make an appointment on a mobile app to cross the border through an official port of entry and receive work permits.
“Trump could flick the switch and revoke it,” said Mr. Neifach. But, he added, many of the migrants could make asylum claims and become part of the clogged courts.
Expedited removal at the border enables the swift deportation of migrants without a hearing, unless they convince an agent that they would face the threat of violence back home, and Mr. Biden in June issued an executive order currently being challenged in court to amplify use of this tool.
Mr. Trump could try to extend it to the interior, though he would likely face court challenges.
Would there be any exceptions among the deportees?
Mr. Trump has not addressed whether he would exercise any discretion, or make any exceptions.
More than one million Americans are married to an undocumented person, and a large share of undocumented immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens.
“When you are talking those kinds of numbers and law enforcement presence, you have to think at the end — what does that do to the atmosphere in the country?” said Ms. Napolitano, the former Homeland Security secretary.
Source: What Would It Take to Deport Millions of Immigrants? The G.O.P. Plan, Explained
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