What Will Mass Deportations Look Like?

The American Immigration Council does not endorse or oppose candidates for elected office. We aim to provide analysis regarding the implications of the election on the U.S. immigration system.

In less than two months, President-elect Donald Trump will begin his second term. We expect a flurry of immigration-related executive actions within days, including a dramatic shift in immigration enforcement in the interior of the United States. On the campaign trail, Trump promised that on “day one” he would “launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” However, we know his plans extend far beyond people who have interacted with the criminal legal system, including the nearly 80% of undocumented people who have been in the country more than 15 years.

While concrete details have not been published, we know the incoming administration will move to expand its existing authorities like state and local law enforcement partnerships and expedited removal to scale up the federal government’s ability to arrest and deport more people. Below, we explore who may be most likely to be targeted and the potential roadblocks to the Trump administration’s ramped up interior immigration enforcement next year.

Who will be most vulnerable to arrest?

Tom Homan, Trump’s incoming “border czar” and senior advisor on mass deportations, has been clear that anyone in the country unlawfully is at risk of arrest but that those who pose “public safety and national security threats” will be first on his list. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) relies heavily on state and local law enforcement authorities to identify and target people suspected of being undocumented because it is less costly than going into communities and conducting “at large” arrests.

Since 2015, 82% of ICE arrests occurred inside of a local, state, or federal jail. The incoming administration is exploring ways to expand local law enforcement’s authority to make easier to arrest people suspected of being undocumented during routine stops. This means that any contact an undocumented person has with a local police officer or other local law enforcement agencies could result in arrest, detention, and deportation for that person and others around them.

Other people who could be easy targets for the incoming administration are the nearly 1.3 million people who have a final deportation order, many of whom are currently monitored by ICE. Because they already have a deportation order, these folks won’t automatically have an opportunity to go before an immigration judge. During Trump’s first term, many people in this situation were ordered to report to ICE, arrested, and deported rapidly with little notice. Their loved ones could also be at risk of arrest as ICE agents have also targeted those not on their radar but who live or work close to people under current surveillance. These “collateral arrests” could occur in places where people work or in their homes.

The Trump administration will likely target some of the 863,000 people protected by Temporary Protected Status (TPS), who are from countries deemed by the federal government too unsafe for return. Currently, there are 16 countries that are designated for TPS, with 13 expiring in 2025. During his first term, Trump tried to terminate TPS for more than 400,000 citizens of El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan, among others. Without TPS, these people could face risk of removal under a mass deportation campaign.

What constraints will Trump’s mass deportation operation be subject to?

It’s clear that the government currently doesn’t have the resources needed to engage in a largescale deportation campaign. The American Immigration Council’s study of the costs of mass deportation found that the government would have to spend at least $88 billion per year to dramatically scale up its detention and deportation infrastructure to deport one million per year. While Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham recently offered some land to Trump to expand immigrant detention centers, those 1,400 acres are likely a drop in the bucket of the expansion needed. ICE would have to increase its current capacity 24 times to engage in an operation at that scale.

Republican leaders are planning to move forward in early 2025 on a spending bill that could include billions for border wall construction, ICE, and more detention beds. Since Republicans control both chambers of Congress, the approval of this new funding is more likely. Given that 90% of immigrant detention centers are owned or operated by private prison companies, the expected increase in detention has already caused their stock prices to jump.

Even with this funding, the Trump administration will face other barriers to its planned campaign. With 3.7 million cases currently pending before just 735 immigration judges, these cases could take years to be resolved.

During his first term, Trump attempted to expand a fast-track deportation process known as expedited removal, which is currently applied to people arrested within 100 miles of the border and within 14 days of entering. This expansion would include people anywhere in the U.S. who entered in the last two years. However, this process will face obstacles as the overwhelming majority of undocumented people have been in the U.S. for more than a decade.

There are also several countries like Russia, Venezuela, and China that outright reject or limit the number of deported individuals they will accept. While Trump is reportedly creating a list of countries to which to deport people when their countries of citizenship don’t accept them, some have already rejected this idea. This means that though we will see an increase in arrests, we won’t necessarily see a similar increase in deportations.

What will be the impact on American society?

The Council’s study estimated that a deportation of a family member could irreparably harm a family, triggering a loss of household income by an average of 62.7% ($51,200 per year). Overall, U.S. GDP could shrink by a larger percentage than the Great Recession of 2007-2009, where 15 million people were unemployed.

But beyond the budgetary and economic costs, the increased arrests and deportations next year (and years to come) will have a devastating and lasting impact for generations. There are about 8.5 million U.S. citizens who are part of 4 million families in the country, including 5.1 million U.S. citizen children. FWD, a bipartisan political organization, estimates that a much larger number—as many as 28 million people—are part of undocumented and mixed-status families with the latter including not just U.S. citizens, but green card holders and others allowed to temporarily reside in the U.S.

The deportation of a parent has long-lasting, traumatic mental and physical health effects on children. It can impact a child’s brain development and result in increases in depression, anxiety, isolation, and other behavioral problems. It can also negatively affect a child’s access to health care, increase the likelihood of foster care placement, and increase the chances of poor educational outcomes including failing in school or dropping out early due to the financial stresses of losing a parent. Given ICE’s heavy reliance on using local law enforcement to identify and arrest people suspected of being undocumented, people in immigrant communities are less likely to trust local law enforcement, including when they are victims of a crime.

Where do we go from here?

In an interview on 60 Minutes, Homan refused to say that he wouldn’t arrest “grandma” and said a family separation policy should “absolutely” be considered. But, despite the results of the election, Trump did not receive a mandate for cruelty.

While polling has suggested an increase in support for deporting undocumented people, the level of support varies significantly based on how the question is framed. Likely voters moved against mass deportation if they were provided the context of the impact of mass deportation on long-term residents, on family separation, and the economy. Another poll found that 61% of likely voters believed that providing a pathway to citizenship was a better option when compared to engaging in a mass deportation campaign, which received 39% support. These reports give us a glimmer of hope that a reasonable and fair immigration policy in the U.S is still possible in the future.

FILED UNDER: Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement