Donald Trump has vowed to begin enacting the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history on Day 1 of his presidency, with one aide saying enforcement will begin “the moment that President Trump puts his hand on that Bible and takes the oath of office” on Monday.
But just how large that operation is and how swiftly it can be carried out will be determined, in part, by whether the administration can clear a number of hurdles, immigration experts said. Those include pushback from some cities and local law enforcement agencies, a budget and staffing shortfall for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, lawsuits from advocacy and civil rights groups, and questions about the cooperation of countries needed to increase removal numbers.
There are currently an estimated 11 million people in the United States who lack legal status.
“I do not think that it will be possible to deport the entire unauthorized immigrant population,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, told NBC News.
Trump’s first administration removed unauthorized immigrants nearly 1.2 million times, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. The Obama administration removed unauthorized immigrants 2.9 million times in his first term and 1.9 million in his second. The figures can include people who were deported more than once.
“The first Trump administration didn’t reach those levels partly because of decreased cooperation with local and state law enforcement, due to in many cases sanctuary policies and laws,” Bush-Joseph said. “This time around, we have many sheriffs and local law enforcement departments on record saying either that they are willing to support the mass deportation plans or that they will not.”
She said she will be watching for a potential “growing divide between red and blue states and localities.”
Democratic city and state leaders across the country have already promised to oppose Trump’s plans, and in some cases have passed ordinances intended to shield undocumented immigrants from his efforts to deport them. Meanwhile, Texas has flexed its own law enforcement power at the border and positioned itself to be a key player in Trump’s immigration agenda as other conservative states have passed anti-sanctuary policies.
During the last decade, about 70% to 75% of arrests by ICE in the interior of the United States were handed over from other law enforcement agencies, including local and state jails as well as federal prison, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
Rick Su, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, said that “for Trump’s policy to work, it may be that a lot of it is going to be coordination with the states.”
Trump officials have said they will take on localities that resist his plans and that the incoming president is considering withholding federal police grants from law enforcement agencies that decline to aid in deportations.
Trump pursued a similar strategy during his first term but was met with significant legal hurdles. The question of what his administration can legally force states and localities to do remains an open question, Su said.
If the courts rule in favor of Trump’s ability to mobilize federal resources and push states and localities to comply, “residents may start turning against these things pretty dramatically,” he said.
As Trump’s second administration unfolds, there could be efforts by some places to fully maintain their sanctuary status, while others could cooperate in cases deemed to be higher priority, such as those who have criminal backgrounds or are deemed national security threats, said Andrea Flores, the vice president of immigration policy and campaigns at FWD.us, which describes itself as a bipartisan organization that advocates for immigration reform.
“But cities will continue to be a front-line defense because they’ve had to provide a patchwork of protections for their population,” said Flores, an immigration policy adviser to the Biden and Obama administrations.
Trump told NBC News last month that his administration would first focus on deporting criminals and then expand its operations.
The Trump administration’s ability to enact that plan at the pace and scale he seeks could also be hindered by legal action from civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups. While the specific legal strategies will depend on what actions Trump takes and if there are potential civil rights issues, the American Civil Liberties Union has said it is “ready to take action the minute Trump takes the oath of office.”
ICE budget shortfall
Another potential major obstacle is the $230 million ICE budget shortfall, even before the costs associated with mass deportations, two U.S. officials familiar with the figure exclusively told NBC News in December.
“ICE is already operating at a shortfall. Unless and until Congress provides a large amount of additional funding for the enforcement aspects of the mass deportation plans, it could really take time to ramp up,” Bush-Joseph said.
ICE and Homeland Security Investigations conduct a criminal search warrant at an agricultural processing plant in Mississippi on Aug. 7, 2019.
Negotiations on spending will begin in January, when Republicans have control of the White House and the Senate and narrow control of the House, but it remains unclear when and how Congress will agree to funding.
“The fact is that even when Trump came in with his tough talk, he didn’t dramatically increase deportations,” Su said of Trump’s first term. “Part of that was resources, part of that was funding.”
Trump’s mass deportation policy could cost more than an estimated $88 billion, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigration research and immigrant advocacy group. Trump previously told NBC News that there was “no price tag” when it came to his mass deportation plan.
Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “border czar,” previously told NBC News $86 billion would be a “great start,” and that he would like at least 100,000 detention beds. Currently, the U.S. has approximately 34,000.
Outgoing ICE Director P.J. Lechleitner told NBC News earlier this month that the agency has nearly 8 million people on its nondetained docket, with one officer for more than every 7,000 cases. Of those, 435,719 are known to have a criminal background as of September 2024, according to a letter to Congress from ICE, with 13,099 of them convicted of homicide and 15,811 convicted of sexual assault.
Lechleitner said ICE has been “chronically underfunded” and needs more personnel and resources.
He also said that with ICE’s current resources, it would not be possible to increase the number of deportations.
Cooperation from other countries
Bush-Joseph said Trump “can’t deport everyone, but if Congress does provide significant additional funding and the restrictive anticipated measures are allowed to go into effect, it is possible that the administration could ramp up deportations over the course of his term.”
Flores and Bush-Joseph said another barrier to mass deportations is the need for diplomatic agreements with other countries, as not all unauthorized immigrants can be deported to the countries they left.
“It’s an absolutely critical element of this mass deportations plan,” Bush-Joseph said.
“The Biden administration made a really concerted push in negotiating with other countries to get more to accept their nationals back,” she said. “That includes a historic agreement with Mexico to take back third-country nationals, but in return for the establishment of lawful pathways, such as humanitarian parole processes.”
Trump has threatened to use tariffs to try to compel countries to take their nationals back, and “it’s not clear what other countries would seek in return for or in exchange for accepting their own nationals or third-country nationals” during his administration, she said.
Most people deported are from Mexico and northern Central America because those countries accept large numbers of returns of their own nationals, she said. But there has a been a major increase in migrants from Venezuela and Cuba in recent years, and those countries do not accept returns of their citizens.
ICE detainees at the Adelanto immigration detention center in Adelanto, Calif., on April 13, 2017.
The experts said there are some factors that could assist Trump in his plans to ramp up deportations, including rapidly deporting more migrants who cross illegally through the expansion of expedited removal.
Starting in 2004, the policy allowed authorities to use an expedited removal process for unauthorized immigrants caught within 100 miles of a U.S. land border and arrested within 14 days of arrival.
Trump’s first administration moved to broadly expand that policy to undocumented immigrants anywhere in the United States who could not prove being in the country continuously for two years or more.
That decision was blocked by the courts before it was eventually allowed to go into effect. A lawyer for the Biden administration withdrew the policy.
“I expect the Trump administration to once again expand expedited removal because that avoids the lengthy immigration court backlogs and delays,” said Bush-Joseph, noting that there were more than 3.5 million pending immigration cases.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court in recent years has also backed the executive branch’s authority on immigration cases, and recent precedent has limited the ability to sue, Bush-Joseph said.
Even when a major lawsuit is brought, courts will have to decide whether to block a policy or let it continue to be enforced as the case makes its way through the legal system.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
