Former President Donald Trump has pledged to launch the largest deportation operation in American history if re-elected, vowing to remove millions of people who do not have legal permission to be in the United States. More recently, he’s promised to remove an additional 1 million migrants who entered the country under a pair of Biden Administration programs.
“Get ready to leave because you’re going to be going out real fast,” Trump said on Fox News in September.
But a Trump Administration effort to deport migrants at such a large scale would face plenty of legal, logistical and financial challenges, USC experts said. And that says nothing of the economic and political consequences of trying to remove roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants as of 2022.
“It’s purely a campaign fever dream,” Roberto Suro, Emerita Professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy, said of Trump’s mass deportation proposal. “Its intent is to motivate voters, rather than, at this point, to actually suggest actions by the government.”
There are ways Trump could legally fast-track deportations of recently arrived migrants, according to Jean Lantz Reisz, Co-Director of the USC Immigration Clinic at the Gould School of Law. But the sheer number of longtime noncitizen residents, the backlog of pending immigration cases and the cooperation needed from migrants’ native countries, among other factors, would make it difficult to quickly remove millions of people.
“You could put 11 million people in removal proceedings, but it would take many years before actually deporting them from the U.S.,” Reisz said. “I don’t see it happening unless there’s significant changes to the law, and you would need congressional action to do that.”
The Personnel Problem
One reason the federal government is unable to deport larger numbers of people is that immigration enforcement agencies don’t have enough manpower, Suro said.
“Just going door to door is incredibly labor intensive,” Suro said. “You need force protection. You have to block traffic. It just requires a ton of people to carry out a raid that maybe gets you three people, so it’s incredibly inefficient.”
Reisz said: “If Trump becomes president and he wants to deport 11 million people, he does not have the personnel to accomplish that.”
When Trump was president, annual deportations never exceeded 350,000, according to Homeland Security data. Former President Barack Obama removed more people, peaking at 432,000 noncitizens in 2013 when there was more cooperation with local law enforcement. Those collaborative programs ended after being challenged in court, Suro said. Democrat-controlled cities and states, meanwhile, have implemented “sanctuary” policies that limit coordination with federal immigration enforcement.
More recently, the Biden Administration forged a bipartisan bill that, among other provisions, would have allowed the Department of Homeland Security to deport certain undocumented immigrants within 100 miles of the southwest border under specified thresholds. But Republicans killed the bill at the behest of Trump.
Trump’s allies have proposed enlisting the National Guard to help with the manpower problem. Such a move could prompt legal challenges, and the Supreme Court has previously ruled that the president doesn’t have blanket authority to enlist the military to enforce immigration law, Reisz said. Efforts to use the Insurrection Act would also face legal hurdles, Reisz added.
Beyond the lack of law enforcement, there also is not enough judicial and detention capacity, Suro and Reisz said. There is currently a backlog of 3.7 million pending immigration cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) currently has 37,000 people in detention, per TRAC. Taxpayers would likely have to foot the bill to expand that capacity, Suro said.
“To put up housing for 100,000 people, we’re talking about a massive endeavor. This could involve enormous expenditures,” Suro said.
How Trump could boost deportations
Still, there are legal avenues that a Trump Administration could pursue to bypass that backlog, Reisz said. A current law, known as “expedited removal,” allows enforcement officials to quickly remove migrants who recently arrived in the U.S. without needing to go before a judge. Current enforcement policy permits expedited removal for people who haven’t been in the country for more than two weeks and are encountered close to the nation’s borders, Reisz said.
That law, however, also authorizes expedited removal for people who can’t prove they’ve been here for longer than two years and live anywhere in the U.S., Reisz noted.
“The easiest way for President Trump to do these mass deportations would be to expand expedited removal to the full two years anywhere in the U.S.,” Reisz said.
Recent arrivals, though, make up just a fraction of the unauthorized U.S. population. Most have already lived in the U.S. for a decade or longer, with longstanding ties to their communities, Suro said. Many are workers who pay taxes and nearly a million are business owners.
And millions of unauthorized residents have U.S. citizen children who are minors, Suro added.
“We’re talking about a long-standing population, which leads to one of the other major policy considerations, which is the number of U.S. citizen children,” Suro said. “Are you going to separate families? Are you going to deport the parents when you can’t deport the children, who are U.S. citizens?”
Unauthorized immigrants with U.S. citizen spouses or children may be eligible for what’s called “cancellation of removal,” but that relief is at the discretion of a judge, Reisz said.
“An immigration judge could say, ‘I think you’re eligible for cancellation, but I’m not going to grant it because you’ve got a bunch of traffic tickets or I don’t think you were a good parent in the first five years of your child’s life,’” Reisz said.
One other avenue Trump has said he’d pursue is invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport noncitizens who are allegedly gang members, drug dealers or cartel members without due process. The law gives the president authority to remove “aliens” from enemy countries when there is a declared war between that country and the U.S. or that enemy country is “invading” or conducting a “predatory incursion.”
But if Trump invoked this authority he would be challenged in court and likely lose, Reisz said.
“Noncitizen gang members, drug dealers, and cartel members are not coming from countries where there is a declared war with the U.S.,” she said. “The countries of the gang members and drug cartels are not invading. For example, Mexico is not invading the U.S. through cartel members. Mexico is officially combating drug cartels.”
The economic impact
Then there is the question of why do mass deportations at all?
“This is very much a political fear-mongering tactic that has been used historically to focus on illegal immigration as the source of our country’s problems,” Reisz said. “But there’s no real data on some of the claims that are supporting mass deportations.”
Claims that unauthorized immigrants are taking jobs from U.S. citizens , for example, are unfounded, according to Manuel Pastor, Distinguished Professor at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Many immigrants take jobs in sectors with a huge need for workers, and their impact on the labor market is complementary – not competitive – with U.S.-born labor, Pastor added. They also contribute tax revenue and demand for consumer goods and services, providing revenue to businesses that, in turn, hire workers, according to the Brookings Institute. A University of Colorado Denver study found that when half a million immigrants are removed from the labor market because of enforcement, the number of U.S.-born people working is reduced by 44,000.
“Behind every software engineer is an army of nannies, food service workers and gardeners,” Pastor said. “Removing them from the workforce could create a sharp labor shortage, particularly in key sectors like agriculture, construction and probably elder care and restaurants.”
Then there’s the sheer cost of mass deportations. At an estimated average of $13,000 per person, it would cost $143 billion to deport 11 million people.
The inflaming rhetoric surrounding mass deportations is corrosive to serious public debate about real immigration issues, Pastor added.
“What should we do about 11 million, often long-settled, undocumented immigrants who are paying taxes, contributing to our economy? What level of enforcement should we have at the border?” Pastor rhetorically asked. “Those are all serious conversations. This is not one.”
