When it comes to mass deportation of illegal immigrants, Donald Trump is expected to mobilize agencies across the U.S. government to help him. This would build on efforts in his first term to tap all available resources and pressure so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions to cooperate, according to six former Trump officials and allies.
Immigrant advocates warn that Trump’s mass deportation effort would be costly, divisive and inhumane, leading to family separations and devastating communities. Edison Research exit polls showed 39% of voters said most immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be deported while 56% said they should be allowed to apply for legal status.
Trump struggled to ramp up deportations during his 2017-2021 presidency. When counting both immigration removals and faster “returns” to Mexico by U.S. border officials, Biden deported more immigrants in fiscal year 2023 than any Trump year,
according to government data.
But a mass deportation operation targeting millions would require many more officers, detention beds and immigration court judges. American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, estimated the cost of deporting 13 million immigrants in the
U.S. illegally as $968 billion over a little more than a decade.
Tom Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a late October interview that the scale of the deportations would hinge on potential officers and detention space.
“It all depends on what the budget is,” he said.
While the incoming Trump administration could benefit from experience gained during his first term, it could again encounter resistance from ideologically opposed government
employees, including officers that screen migrants for asylum.
The American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant advocacy groups have been preparing for court battles if Trump again tests the bounds of his legal authority.
Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who led the fight against Trump’s contentious family separation policy, said more than 15 lawyers focused on immigration with the organization’s national office spent the year readying for the possibility of a Trump return.
“We definitely need to be coordinated and have more resources, because I think they will come in much more prepared,” Gelernt said.
The State Department in particular could be one place where Trump acts more aggressively than during his first term, several Trump backers said.
A key factor will be whether other countries will accept their citizens, an issue Trump faced with limited success during his first term. The Trump administration also struggled at times to convince other nations in the region – including Mexico – to take steps to stop migrants from moving toward the U.S.-Mexico border.
Ken Cuccinelli, former acting deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Trump, said the State Department was a “roadblock” for immigration enforcement and that aggressive appointees will be key.
Christopher Landau, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2019-2021, recently said he was frustrated with the reluctance of some U.S. diplomats to tackle immigration enforcement.
“Nobody really thought that was their problem,” Landau said in an October panel discussion by the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restricting immigration.
About half of ICE’s 21,000 employees are part of its Homeland Security Investigations unit, which focuses on transnational crime such as drug smuggling and child
exploitation rather than immigration enforcement. Several Trump allies said the unit would need to spend more time on immigration.
HSI has distanced itself from ICE’s immigration work in recent years, saying fear of deportation made it harder for its investigators to build trust in immigrant communities.
Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s first-term immigration agenda, said in 2023 that National Guard troops from cooperative states could potentially be deployed to resistant states to assist with deportations, which would likely trigger legal battles.
With Reuters inputs
