Trump excited the crowd yesterday with promises of bloodshed with his mass deportation policy.
They wouldn’t have it any other way.
Two former officials who handled immigration issues for then-President Donald Trump say that a “whole of government” approach costing billions would be needed to mount the “largest deportation effort in American history” promised in the Republican convention platform if Trump is re-elected.
The exact number of people who would be deported in a second Trump administration is hard to pin down.
During the June 29 presidential debate, Trump claimed there were 18 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. One of the two former Trump officials said it could be as high as 30 million.
The last official estimate in 2022 was under 11 million, but when you count the American children and other Americans caught up in the raids by mistake, they can probably get to 20 million or so.
Last week, according to Semafor, a former acting ICE director under Trump who is seen as a possible Department of Homeland Security chief in a second Trump administration told a conservative conference, “They ain’t seen s— yet. Wait until 2025.”
“Trump comes back in January,” Tom Homan said, “I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.”
So, what’s it going to take?
NBC News asked acting ICE Director Patrick J. Lechleitner about what would be required to deport millions of people.
“It’s not only putting them on planes and flying them, which is expensive, we got to have airplanes. We also have to deal with host nations. We have to get travel documents, we have to do all the logistics involved with that.”
He said for some people who are not in detention, the path to deportation can take years. “We have to monitor them that whole time. That’s resource intensive,” he said.
Abigail Andrews, a professor of urban studies and planning at the University of California, San Diego who has been studying deportation data for the past 10 years, said she’s highly skeptical about how a mass deportation effort would unfold.
“There is no logistical way to track down 10 to 12 million undocumented immigrants with the ICE employees they currently have,” she said.
They’ll have plenty of help from other law enforcement and the military
Blair said an effort of the size proposed would require heavy involvement from local law enforcement — and he said border cities are already handling enough. “We don’t have the manpower or space to handle,” he said. “The federal spending would have to flow to these local agencies.” He also said the optics of deporting children could create significant backlash.
Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection under Trump, said mass deportations should prioritize those who have committed serious crimes rather than families. He said enforcement could be via additional funding to ICE as well as consequences for cities that refuse to cooperate.
“One thing I think we need to do is go after the sanctuary cities to take away their funding,” said Morgan, now a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.Experts say costs would quickly mount with an operation of this size.
Yep:
As for families with mixed status such as those with children who are citizens and parents who are undocumented, one of the former Trump officials sees it as an opportunity, hoping that the threat of removing one member will propel whole families to leave. “Your parents can’t use you as a prop to justify their illegal presence,” the former official said.
The former Trump officials said cooperation across the entire federal government, not just from DHS leadership, would be needed.
One of the ex-officials said the effort would require a “trigger puller,” someone at DHS who would not be afraid to go in front of Congress and defend the deportation effort.
The former Trump officials said buy-in and resources would be needed from agencies like the Pentagon, which would be asked to participate in either setting up detention camps or relocating migrants to foreign military bases. The Interior Department would be called upon because federal land might be needed for deportation sites. They said cooperation from the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the care and custody of unaccompanied children, would also be required to facilitate removals.
I’m sure the tariffs and the massive unprecedented “growth” (Trump’s only economic plan) will pay for all of it and more.
Trump says this will be bloody and his followers are thrilled at the prospect.
These are your fellow Americans:
