Donald Trump has promised that, if re-elected president, he will massively deport those who do not have permission to remain in the United States.
While his campaign has responded in different ways to the question of how many could end up being expelled, his running mate, Republican vice presidential hopeful JD Vance, gave a concrete number during an interview with ABC television.
“Let’s start with a million people. “That was where Kamala Harris failed and from there we can start working,” said the senator from the state of Ohio.
But although the idea is already part of the proposals in Trump’s electoral platform – under the slogan “Mass deportations, now!” – experts warn that expelling so many people from the country would imply a series of legal and even practical challenges.
And migrant advocates have also warned of the significant human cost of deportations, with families separated and operating in communities and workplaces across the US.
What are the legal challenges?
According to the latest figures from the Department of Homeland Security and the Pew Research Institute, today about 11 millions of migrants undocumenteda number that has remained relatively stable since 2005.
Most of them are long-term residents: nearly four out of every five undocumented migrants have been in the country for at least a decade.
Immigrants who are in the country without legal status have right to the due processincluding a court hearing before being expelled.
So a drastic increase in deportations would probably happen expand before he system of courts of immigrationtoday saturated and with delays in resolving cases.
Most immigrants in the country did not enter the deportation system after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, but rather by local police.
However, in many of the country’s main cities, laws have been passed that restrict the cooperation between the police and he ICE.
The Trump campaign has committed to taking action against these cities, called “sanctuary cities,” but the network of local, state and federal laws in the US complicate the situation.
Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, points out that cooperation between ICE agents and local authorities would be essential to carry out a mass deportation program.
“It is much easier for ICE to go pick someone up from jail if local authorities collaborate, rather than having to go looking for them on the streets,” says Bush-Joseph.
As an example of how crucial this aspect is, Bush-Joseph recalls statements in early August by officials from the Broward and Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, when they assured that they would not send any of their agents to help in mass deportation plans.
“There are many other counties that are not going to cooperate with Trump’s mass deportation plan. And that makes it much more difficult,” he explains.
Any mass deportation program will also have many legal implications, especially because of the demands that is expected to be generated among human rights defense organizations.
However, a 2022 Supreme Court ruling established that courts cannot issue injunctions on immigration enforcement policies, meaning they would remain in effect even as challenges make their way through the legal system. .
Is it feasible from a logistical point of view?
Now, if the US government were to move forward with the legal steps that make its mass deportation plan possible, authorities would still have to deal with the enormous logistical challenges.
During Joe Biden’s term, deportation efforts have focused on migrants detained at the border.
Those who were already in the country and end up being deported either usually have criminal records or are considered a “threat to national security.”
In 2021, the controversial raids that were carried out during Donald Trump’s government in workplaces were suspended.
And unlike those detained at the border, the number of deportations of people who were arrested within the United States has been falling in the last decade until it is below 100,000 annually, after having reached its maximum —230,000— during the first years of Barack Obama’s government.
“To multiply that number and reach one million (of deportees) in a single year, it will take a enormous investment of resources that today do not seem to exist”Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the US Immigration Council, tells the BBC.
For one thing, experts doubt that 20,000 ICE agents and support staff will be enough to search and find even a fraction of the number the Trump campaign is targeting.
Furthermore, Reichlin-Melnick points out that the deportation process is long and complicated and that the identification and arrest of an undocumented migrant is only the beginning.
Afterwards, detainees will have to be in a detention center or alternative program, waiting to appear before an immigration judge, and The system has been accumulating cases for years without being able to close them.
Once this step is completed, the deportation proceeds, which also requires the diplomatic cooperation of the recipient country.
“At each of those steps, ICE simply does not have the capacity to process millions of people,” Reichlin-Melnick says.
Trump has said he will involve the National Guard and other military forces to assist in the deportations.
Historically, US military forces have had a limited, more supportive role on the US-Mexico border.
Now beyond rely on the military and have the help of “local police forces“Trump has given few clues about how he would carry out his mass deportation plan.
In an interview with the magazine timeearlier this year, the former president only said that he does not rule out building new migrant detention facilities and that he would take measures to provide procedural immunity to the police, to shield them from possible lawsuits from progressive groups.
And he added that there could be incentives for local and state law enforcement agencies that participate in the planand that those who do not want to do it “will not participate in the benefits.”
“We have to do it. It is not sustainable for our country.”
The BBC has attempted to contact Trump’s team for more details.
Eric Ruark, the research director at NumbersUSA — an organization that advocates for stricter immigration controls — said any deportation program from within the country will only be effective if it goes hand in hand with an increase in personnel controlling the border. .
“That has to be the priority. If it is not, there will not be much progress on the issue. It is what keeps people coming to the border,” he points out.
And he adds that an offensive against companies that hire undocumented immigrants is also necessary.
“(The immigrants) are coming for work,” he emphasizes. “And they are succeeding, basically because the ability to monitor and enforce the law has been dismantled.”
The political and financial cost
Experts estimate the cost of maintaining a plan like the one proposed by Trum at about US$100,000 million.
ICE’s 2023 budget for transportation and deportation was $327 million, and it expelled nearly 140,000 people from the country.
Under Trump’s plan, thousands of people awaiting immigration hearings could be detained. The Republican presidential candidate’s campaign has planned to build large camps to house all of them.
They would also have to multiply flights to carry out the deportations, and that would probably involve having the support of the Air Force.
And what is clear is that any increase in the operation of the corresponding departments implies that costs will skyrocket.
“Even a minor change costs tens of millions of dollars”explains Reichlin-Melnick.
In addition, they would have to be added to the expenses of other border control efforts that Trump has promised: those of continuing to build the wall on the border with Mexico, those involved in a naval block to prevent fentanyl from entering the country and those generated by the transfer of thousands of troops to the border.
Adam Isacson, a migration and border expert at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), said that “horrifying images of mass deportations” could also have a political cost for Trump, on a public relations level, if he were to return to power.
“Every community in America would see people they know and love being put on those buses,” he explains.
“There would be very painful images of children crying, of families, on television. All of that is very bad press. This is what we already saw with the family separation policy, but amplified,” he concludes.
Have there been mass deportations before?
In the four years that Trump occupied the White House, around 1.5 million people were deported, both from the border and from within the country.
The Biden administration, which had deported about 1.1 million people as of February 2024, is on track to match that number, statistics show.
During Obama’s two terms, when Biden was vice president, more than three million people were deported, leading some immigration reform advocates to dub the then-president “the deporter in chief.”
But the only program comparable to the one proposed by Trump would perhaps be the one carried out in 1954 within the framework of the so-called “Operation Wetbacks” (Operation Wetback), named after a common insult that was used at that time against Mexicans, and which led to the deportation of 1.3 million people.
Although there are historians who doubt the figure.
The plan, approved under the presidency of Dwi ght Eisenhower, encountered considerable public opposition—partly because some American citizens were also deported—as well as a lack of funding.
In 1955 it was discontinued.
Immigration experts say that the fact that it focused on people originally from Mexico and the lack of due process mean that that operation cannot be compared to a current mass deportation program.
“The deportees were single, Mexican men,” notes Bush-Joseph.
“Now, the vast majority of those who cross the border in areas between ports of entry are not originally from Mexico, or even from the northern part of Central America. And that makes it much more difficult to deport them,” he adds.
“They are incomparable situations”.
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