The stark reality of mass deportation

People hold signs that read "Mass Deportation Now" and "Make America Strong Again" on the third day of the Republican National Convention on July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump has promised that he will start mass deportations if he wins in November. The promise has become a central selling point of his 2024 campaign. At a campaign rally in Michigan this summer, Trump vowed, “As soon as I take the oath of office, we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” 

In April, during an interview with TIME, Trump laid out his plan for mass deportations, stating that he will use “local law enforcement” and “the National Guard.” Trump also said he would “not rule out” building new migrant detention facilities and that he would use the military “if necessary.” When TIME told Trump that deploying the military against civilians is prohibited under the Posse Comitatus Act, Trump responded, “Well, these aren’t civilians. These are people that aren’t legally in our country.”

Trump has promised that one of his first targets will be Springfield, Ohio, where Trump and his allies have, on numerous occasions, falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants are eating neighborhood pets. “[W]e will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio. Large deportations. We’re gonna get these people out,” Trump said last week at a press conference in California. (The Haitian immigrants that Trump and his allies are targeting are in the country legally.) Trump also promised to prioritize deportations from Aurora, Colorado, where Trump has falsely claimed that Venezuelan immigrants are “taking over the whole town.”

A new Scripps News/Ipsos poll surveyed voters about what they thought of Trump’s plan, asking if they “support the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.” Fifty-four percent of respondents either “strongly” or “somewhat support” the policy. This includes “86% of Republicans, 58% of independents, and 25% of Democrats.”

But the results of the poll tell us less about the actual views of American voters, and more about the overall failure of the media and others to educate citizens on what exactly Trump’s plans for mass deportation entail. The policy is not something that can be summarized in a seven-word poll question. Mass deportations of immigrants would divert law enforcement from critical tasks, cost billions of dollars, break up families, damage the economy, and compromise the nation's values. 

The human capacity problem

The scale required to orchestrate Trump’s proposed policy is far beyond the capacity of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump’s solution is to use local law enforcement. In an interview on Fox News, Trump said that he would give local police “immunity” to do “the job they have to do,” and that “the officers understand who the migrants are.”

Using local law enforcement would result in police officers having less time to perform their other duties. A March report by the Center for Migration Studies of New York cited research that found putting local police officers in charge of immigration responsibilities would make “local communities less safe” and immigrants, fearing deportation, “less likely to report crimes or cooperate with police.”

Trump’s plan to use the National Guard, and, if necessary, the military, to conduct deportations would take them away from other responsibilities and therefore “weaken our national security.” This is why the Pentagon “usually oppos[es] efforts to use its troops for immigration purposes,” according to a Center for Migration Studies report. 

The enormous price tag

ICE acknowledges that each deportation is costly and difficult. In its 2023 annual report, the agency stated, “Removal management is a complex process that requires careful planning and coordination with a wide range of domestic and foreign partners and uses significant ERO resources.” According to that report, ICE deported 142,580 non-citizens from the U.S. in 2023. Its budget for removals and transportation last year was over $420 million, meaning that it cost nearly $3,000 to remove each person from the country.

If Trump successfully deported the estimated 11 million non-citizens currently in the U.S., it would cost $33 billion just to transport people out of the U.S. — more than triple ICE’s total budget in 2023.

But the cost of actually moving a person off U.S. soil is only one part of the equation. It also costs ICE money to track people down and keep them in custody before their deportation. NBC reported that ICE currently has about 40,000 beds in detention centers which each cost $57,378 a year to maintain. If Trump enacted his mass deportation plan of 11 million people, ICE would need to expand its detention capacity drastically.

In 2015, when Trump first proposed a mass deportation policy, experts estimated that the plan would cost half a trillion dollars. Now that he wants to involve local police and military in the effort, the price tag would go up further.

The nationwide civil rights violation

Trump’s promise of mass deportations would cause major civil rights violations. The policy would effectively result in local law enforcement engaging in a mass racial profiling campaign, as there is no objective way to identify undocumented immigrants. According to a report by the Center for Migration Studies of New York, “[i]mmigration ‘sweeps’... often lead to profiling, usually on racial or ethnic grounds.” The report argues that this would lead to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants being “unjustly detained and even deported,” and give them “little opportunity to legally respond to their arrest and detention.”

In a memo released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in response to Trump’s proposed immigration policies, the group warns that Trump’s plan could also lead to violations of “constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, including arrests and detentions without a specific reason to detain a certain individual.”  

The massive detention camps

Once the Trump administration identifies undocumented immigrants, it would need to detain them somewhere before deporting them. Trump has suggested that massive detention centers would need to be built in order to keep up with the number of deportations being processed.

Aside from the economic cost, detention centers have been the sites of numerous human rights abuses. Undocumented immigrants in detention centers have been denied urgent medical care, sexually abused, and kept in chain-link pens.

The impact on American families

Mass deportation would disrupt the lives of millions of families in the U.S. Recent data shows that 22 million people lived in mixed-status households (households in which at least one undocumented person lives with U.S. citizens, green-card holders, or other legally-authorized immigrants). Data from 2014 showed that almost all U.S.-born citizens living in mixed-status households were children under the age of 18. A 2017 study analyzing this data found that if just a third of those children remained in the U.S. after their undocumented guardians were deported, it would cost the government $118 billion to support them.

The same study found that removing undocumented members of mixed status households would decrease household income and push millions of American families into poverty.

The damage to the economy

Multiple studies show that the U.S. economy would be weaker without migrant workers. If all undocumented immigrants could be deported, American workers would find themselves with fewer job opportunities and higher costs.

A study of the economic impacts of deportations between 2008 and 2014 makes the damage clear. The study found that for every 1 million undocumented workers deported, 88,000 American workers lost jobs. Trump has said that he wants to deport millions of undocumented immigrants per year, multiplying the loss of American jobs.

The U.S. is already facing a labor shortage, and removing 11 million undocumented workers (about 5% of the total workforce) would only make the problem worse, pushing up prices on goods and services. Mass deportation would also impact the housing market, putting many of the 1.3 million mortgages of mixed-status households in danger, and cut tax revenue to the government and Social Security.