Trump plans the ‘largest deportation’ ever. Here’s how it might start.
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Sarah Matusek Staff writer
| Denver
Donald Trump vowed during his campaign to enact “the largest deportation operation in American history,” possibly involving the military. Can he?
Legal and logistical barriers may stymie his plans. The president-elect also pledged more deportations during his first term than he delivered. And yet, a second Trump administration is armed with lessons learned from his prior administration and hard-line loyalists who shaped his border policies before.
Why We Wrote This
President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly called for mass deportations. As he moves to make good on a campaign pledge in the name of security, the future of unauthorized immigrants is unclear.
Among those are Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s newly announced “border czar,” and Stephen Miller, an immigration adviser who will take on a deputy chief of staff role. Trump advisers are discussing declaring a national emergency to help facilitate immigration detention and deportation, and potentially open up the use of military bases to hold immigrants.
For their part, many immigrants and their advocates are bracing for major change. Their fears include more separations of mixed-status families and potential hits to industries like agriculture, which economists say could raise prices nationwide.
The incoming administration says it will target criminals who pose security risks first. But Mr. Trump will likely broaden that scope to other unauthorized immigrants.
Donald Trump vowed during his campaign to enact “the largest deportation operation in American history,” possibly involving the military. Can he?
Legal and logistical barriers may stymie his plans. The president-elect also pledged more deportations during his first term than he delivered. And yet, a second Trump administration is armed with lessons learned from his prior administration and hard-line loyalists who shaped his border policies before.
Among those are Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s newly announced “border czar,” and Stephen Miller, an immigration adviser who will take on a deputy chief of staff role. Trump advisers are discussing declaring a national emergency to help facilitate immigration detention and deportation, and potentially open up the use of military bases to hold immigrants, The Wall Street Journal reports. On Monday, Mr. Trump called similar reports “TRUE!!!” on his Truth Social account.
Why We Wrote This
President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly called for mass deportations. As he moves to make good on a campaign pledge in the name of security, the future of unauthorized immigrants is unclear.
For their part, many immigrants and their advocates are bracing for major change. Their fears include more separations of mixed-status families and potential hits to industries like agriculture, which economists say could raise prices across the United States.
The scale of deportations may depend on what Mr. Trump wants to accomplish, says David Thronson, immigration law professor at Michigan State University.
“If he wants headlines,” says Professor Thronson, he could order mass roundups at the limits of the law – and let courts decide “what violates due process or not.”
What are Trump’s deportation priorities?
Congress hasn’t made major changes to the country’s immigration laws since the 1990s. Yet the application of those laws depends on who’s in office, as presidents set priorities. That includes which immigrants to focus on for “removal” – a legal term for deportation.
During the Biden administration’s first year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to focus on the removal of noncitizens who threaten national security, public safety, and border security. He counseled against spending resources on those posing no threat.
The incoming administration similarly says it will first target criminals who pose security risks. But Mr. Trump will likely broaden that scope to other unauthorized immigrants. Entering the country illegally, for example, is a misdemeanor on the first offense. Residing in the U.S. without proper authorization, such as by overstaying a visa, is a civil violation.
Mr. Homan, tapped to oversee the mass deportation effort, has confirmed to press that workplace roundups would resume. He also told conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk that the operation should be transparent, with a weekly briefing to the public.
Former acting director of ICE under the first Trump term, who pitched the “zero tolerance” policy that resulted in family separation, Mr. Homan says transportation and shelter help from the Department of Defense may be necessary. He’s also mentioned outreach from “thousands” of military and law enforcement retirees willing to assist.
“If you’re in the country illegally, you shouldn’t be comfortable,” he told The New York Times. “You should be concerned because you broke our laws.”
That concern is felt by a small-business owner in Colorado. She overstayed her tourist visa and now lives here without authorization.
“It’s scary for us,” says the woman, who preferred not to have her name published for privacy. There are “not many options for us to come here in the ‘right’ way.”
Mr. Trump’s win was “something we didn’t expect to happen,” she says. Her family plans to remain in blue-state Colorado and avoid visiting relatives in Florida. She considers the Republican-led state more supportive of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Some polls suggest the majority of Americans support mass deportations. Yet other survey questions hint at more nuanced views held by the U.S. public – like strong desires for both border security and increased pathways to citizenship. How many unauthorized immigrants are currently in the country, and subject to deportation, is unclear.
As of January 2022, the government estimates, there were 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. (That’s roughly a quarter of the foreign-born population.)
However, many immigrants have since entered illegally, and it’s unknown how many have stayed. At the southern border, from the beginning of the Biden presidency through June, the administration has released into the country some 4.6 million individuals who lacked prior permission to enter, estimates the Migration Policy Institute. By contrast, under 1 million were released under Mr. Trump’s first term.
The Department of Homeland Security includes people with temporary protections from deportation in its “unauthorized” count. That’s another reason it’s hard to pinpoint exact numbers eligible for removal. Mr. Trump has spoken of ending those temporary protections, however.
No matter how dramatically Mr. Trump scales up removals, though, infrastructure will need to scale up, too.
What are the logistical and legal hurdles?
Removals involve ICE officers, detention space, court bandwidth, and charter flights. One pro-immigrant group has put the price tag of mass deportations at $315 billion, if not more. Yet the businessman returning to the Oval Office dismisses the cost.
“When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag,” Mr. Trump told NBC News.
To carry out his plan, Mr. Trump speaks of tapping into military might, including the National Guard. But there are legal limits around how presidents can use those troops to enforce laws.
Immigration lawyers point to the Constitution’s due process protections that extend to immigrants on U.S. soil. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has said he’ll invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. During times of war or invasion, the law makes subjects of enemy nations “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies.” The president-elect and his allies have repeatedly said that illegal immigration is an “invasion.”
How immigration judges decide cases – including defenses to deportation, like asylum – may also change based on who’s installed as attorney general. That’s because the country’s immigration courts and judges operate within the Department of Justice. (One of Mr. Trump’s former attorneys general, Jeff Sessions, for instance, decided victims of domestic or gang violence generally weren’t eligible for asylum. The Biden administration reversed this.) Last week, Mr. Trump announced his nomination of Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, a lawmaker staunchly opposed to illegal immigration, as attorney general.
Moreover, Mr. Trump may benefit from a legal victory handed to Mr. Biden last year. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas and Louisiana lacked standing to challenge the government’s immigration enforcement priorities.
In some ways, the incoming president is “in a stronger legal position” than before, and can “push the envelope on other things,” says Professor Thronson.
The Republican administration can expect challenges from elected officials, however. Some Democratic governors, like those in Illinois and Massachusetts, have already pledged to limit cooperation, based on protecting their state residents and democratic norms. Selene Rodriguez, a campaign director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, argues that places with “sanctuary” polices are only “aiding and abetting crime committed by illegal aliens.” She says liberal leaders “need to get out of the way” and let the government do its job.
Another roadblock for Mr. Trump will be diplomatic. Despite the president-elect’s frequent disparagement of Venezuelan immigrants, including suspected gang members, Venezuela doesn’t currently accept deportees from the U.S., reports Axios.
How will this affect communities?
In Oklahoma City, immigration lawyer Kelli Stump is fielding fearful calls from people worried they’ll get deported.
Potential mass deportation is a “wait-and-see situation,” which makes it hard to counsel clients, says the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Still, Ms. Stump hopes she’s right in thinking that mass removals “can’t happen overnight.”
Beyond human impacts, however, there may be economic ones. Given the country’s reliance on unauthorized immigrants for labor, some economists worry mass deportations could spike prices.
“I think we can learn a lot from that first term,” when agricultural employers were largely spared, says Rick Naerebout, chief executive officer of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association. That’s because the impact of mass deportation on rural economies, often reliant on agriculture, would be “devastating,” he says.
In sectors like his, employers may compete for workers more than workers compete for employment. Idaho’s September unemployment rate was 3.6% – below the nation’s 4.1%.
“Our jobs are not jobs that Americans have filled for decades now,” he says.
Not since the 1980s, under Republican President Ronald Reagan, have unauthorized workers benefited from mass amnesty. In as soon as two months, Americans may see what mass consequences are possible.
Editor’s note: This article was updated Nov. 18, the same day as publication, to add Mr. Trump’s comments on mass deportation plans.
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