Will Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States, be able to conduct the largest mass deportation in American history, as he promised during his presidential campaign?
Trump certainly has the gall, but the question is, does he, as president, have the resources to carry out a mass deportation of 13.3 million undocumented immigrants? The US has been deporting unlawful immigrants, captured at the border, for decades. Trump’s mass deportation goal is not about stopping or deporting unlawful entrants at the border. He has pledged to undertake largescale internal enforcement initiatives to identify the undocumented living in communities across the country, and arrest, detain, and deport them.
That the process would be inhumane is something Trump does not even pretend to care about. More importantly, the process would be self-defeating – leading to a a series of frustrating failures that would sap Trump’s energy and diminish his second-term. In short, try as he might, Trump, will not be able to deport 13.3 million undocumented individuals living in the US.
After the presidential inauguration Trump announced a national emergency on the border. This will allow funding for Pentagon to build additional enforcement infrastructure at the border, and for the relaunch of Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, which required migrants seeking asylum at the southern border to remain in Mexico during their court proceedings that can go on for years. Yet, all this will only restrict or stop new unlawful entries.
What about internal enforcement – to find, detain and deport those living in the US? Trump’s plan is to increase raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “We will take the handcuffs on ICE that was put on by the Biden administration and do the job,” says Tom Homan, Trump’s chief of the US Department of Homeland Security. ICE is a branch of the US Homeland Security which is tasked with conducting internal enforcement: identify, arrest, transport, detain, and remove the undocumented. It is notorious for carrying out raids at workplaces. The Biden administration had banned these raids.
An image shared by ICE, of an immigrant purportedly accused of assault. Photo: X/@ICEgov.
Evidence from ICE’s efforts during Trump’s first term shows that raids have limited impact on actual deportation. Trump deported fewer undocumented persons per year in his first term than the Democratic presidents who preceded and succeeded him, namely Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Indeed, ICE officials acknowledge that deportation fell during Trump’s first term because they were engaged in internal immigration enforcement, which forced them to reduce efforts on border enforcement. There is nothing to indicate that the second term would be very different on this issue.
Challenges of finding the undocumented
Over two-thirds of the undocumented have been living in the US for more than a decade. They have family members (children, spouses, siblings) who are either US citizens or legal residents. They hold bank accounts. Many have social security numbers, generally stolen, and work in occupations where they contribute to social security and Medicaid taxes. A large number – close to 40% – own their homes. While it is easy to identify the undocumented who live in shelters – and whose numbers are tiny – it is nearly impossible to identify those who live in their own homes or in rented accommodations. The risk of arresting and detaining legal immigrants or those with protected status is very high.
The American Immigration Council (AIC) has estimated that the government would have to hire 220,00 to 409,000 new law enforcement agents and staff to identify, arrest, detain and deport the 13million odd undocumented people. The current strength of ICE staff is only 20,000. That’s like increasing the size of ICE staff by a staggering 11 to 20 times. Even carrying out one million arrests per year would require hiring 30,000 new law enforcement agents and staff. The cost: $315 billion to $ 1 trillion, depending on the time period over which the deportation drive is carried out.
AIC’s estimates, though huge, are quite conservative. These estimates assume that about 20% of the undocumented will simply self-deport, or leave the country, in the face of more stringent internal enforcement which will make life difficult for them and increase the fear of harassment by ICE.
Of course, mass deportation on such a large scale will require massive investments in building detention centres, arranging for domestic transportation to detention centres and providing for the undocumented till they are deported. ICE will have to increase its flight capacity for deportation by close to, hold your breath, 500 times. Trump supporters would argue, and rightly so, that the US is rich enough to set aside large sums for chartering flights, but if the undocumented refuse to identify their country of origin or if the country of origin refuses to accept a large number of undocumented, no amount of enforcement money would help accomplish the goal of deportation.
An image shared by ICE, of an immigrant being arrested. Photo: X/@ICEgov.
Sanctuary cities
Most undocumented immigrants live in what are called sanctuary cities (or states) where the city (and state) governments have refused to help the federal enforcement agencies, including ICE, to carry out local enforcement. In 2017, when Trump was first elected president, there was an apprehension that sanctuary cities would be forced to change their laws. That did not happen; in fact, the number of sanctuary cities has increased. ICE officials, in their report to the Department of Homeland Security, have complained that they could not pay attention to border enforcement because they were fighting battles of local enforcement in sanctuary cities.
Trump sought to to bankrupt the sanctuary cities. He bullied their mayors by threatening to withhold federal grants. Such was the commitment of sanctuary cities to protecting the immigrants that they refused to cooperate with the federal enforcement agencies even in the face of such threats. Not just that, the mayors challenged him legally, and the courts found president Trump in violation of his responsibilities. That was the end of Trump’s war on sanctuary cities in the first term.
Will Trump be able to bully the sanctuary cities in his second-term? He certainly hopes so. Are there signs of sanctuary cities caving in to his bullying? So far, there is little evidence of that.
Economic costs of deportation
Undocumented immigrants constitute 3.3% of the US population, and over 5% of its workforce. Large though these averages are, they still understate the impact the undocumented have in specific sectors. The vast majority of workers in farms, the hospitality sector, healthcare and childcare are undocumented. Over 12% of workers in construction are undocumented. Mass deportation will devastate the businesses in which the undocumented work and cause large scale labour scarcity.
Even if Trump is willing to pay these costs, the question still remains the same — how exactly would he carry out such an operation.
In his first term, Trump passed as many as 472 policy directives on immigration to restrict it. So, expect a lot of shock and awe on immigration. The aim is to devastate immigrant communities, spread fear, cause civic unrest, and shake up the sectors in which immigrants work in large numbers. This will cause inflation of goods and services that the undocumented provide, sending a shock waves through the US economy. Mass deportation of 13.3 million would lead to a loss of 4.2% to 6.8% in GDP, according to an estimate by the American Immigration Council. The 2007-2008 financial crisis caused less damage to the GDP, in comparison. How far Trump is ready to go on this issue will be known soon.
Neeraj Kaushal, Professor of Social Policy at the Columbia University School of Social Work, is the author of Blaming Immigrants: Nationalism and the Economics of Global Movement. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
