President-elect Donald Trump has promised to carry out the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in American history. His appointment of Thomas Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as border czar signals his commitment to that promise.
There are 11.7 million people residing in the U.S. illegally. “Bottom line,” says Homan, “if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”
Realistically, however, it is hard to imagine carrying out a mass deportation anywhere close to that number. The huge costs involved — including the not-inconsequential hidden costs — are almost certain to limit its scale.
While discussing executive orders being written for the president to sign immediately after his inauguration, Trump transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, “On Day One he’s going to open the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in American history.” As Homan has stated, “Of course, there has to be historic deportation.”
What would constitute a “historic deportation?” During Trump’s first term, his administration deported 1.5 million undocumented immigrants.
President Biden is on pace to deport the same number by the time he leaves office. Approximately 3 million people were deported during President Barack Obama’s eight years in office. So, for the last 16 years, “normal” deportations have averaged 375,000 a year.
The bulk of those deported were people apprehended after recently crossing the border. Deportations from the U.S. interior have averaged 100,000 annually for the past decade.
What would it take to double or triple those numbers? First, there are not enough detention facilities to house millions of immigrants, nor are there enough immigration courts to process their cases for any immediate mass deportation.
The American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration advocacy organization, recently estimated that if sufficient detention facilities were constructed and nearly 1,000 immigration courts established, it would take a decade and cost almost $1 trillion to remove the undocumented immigrant population from the U.S.
Trump says, “It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice” other than mass deportation.
However, the costs of removal are only the tip of the iceberg. There are other costs.
For example, Trump has stated that he wants to make housing more affordable and decrease grocery prices.
That won’t happen if homebuilders and food producers have to replace the nearly 1.6 million undocumented construction workers (25% of the total nationwide) and the tens of thousands of undocumented farm workers (more than 40% of the total) they now employ. Any mass deportation would drastically shrink the labor supply in these industries and increase consumer costs.
Mass deportations also would undermine Trump’s promise to reinvigorate the economy. The American Immigration Council study estimates that a mass deportation would shrink the U.S. economy — that is, lower the overall gross domestic product — by 4.2% to 6.8%.
A smaller and more targeted deportation seems likely, given the massive costs that counter Trump’s other goals.
Homan has stated, “You’ve got to prioritize where you go first” when choosing who to deport and that “we’re going to concentrate on the worst of the worst.”
According to a recent House Judiciary Committee report, ICE currently has a list of 617,607 non-detained undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of a crime or have pending criminal charges. Presumably, they would constitute the “worst of the worst.”
Trump should concentrate his deportation agenda on this group: immigrants who are here illegally and who have committed serious crimes. Such a program would be logistically feasible, entail lower economic costs, wouldn’t undermine his other policy goals, and could still allow Trump to claim that he’s delivered a “historic deportation.”
Any mass deportation of non-criminal immigrants from the American interior will entail significant economic costs, tear hard-working families apart and likely create serious public backlash.
Trump would be more successful if he focused on deporting only criminals, while securing the border and opening greater paths for legal immigration to help fuel our economy.
Editor’s note: Benjamin Powell is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and director of the Free Market Institute and a professor of economics at Texas Tech University. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.
Donald Trump’s promise to launch an intensive campaign of immigration enforcement, or “mass deportations” for short, is feasible and will be beneficial to Americans.
While there will be some increased costs to boost enforcement, the return on investment is significant and comes in the form of more jobs for Americans, and less money needed for services to migrants and safer communities.
Our nation has experienced an unprecedented influx of illegal migration under President Biden’s policies, with profound consequences for the communities absorbing the migrants. Since 2021, more than 7.5 million inadmissible migrants have been allowed to enter outside the legal programs, pushing the foreign-born share to 14% of our population, the highest in history.
The cost of this mass resettlement program has been enormous — hundreds of billions of dollars for transportation, housing, food, medical care, schooling and other services to the migrants. Most of the cost is borne by state and local taxpayers, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions like California, New York and Massachusetts, which have spent extravagantly on shelters and other support.
We are told by critics of immigration enforcement that Trump’s mass deportation plan, to be led by new border czar Tom Homan, is logistically impossible and too costly to achieve.
That’s wishful thinking on the part of the critics. The immigration agencies have numerous authorities and tools available to them. They have been prevented from using these tools under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who nearly managed to abolish ICE with directives restricting enforcement and giving most illegal aliens (and their employers) a free pass from any threat of arrest or consequences.
Under Biden, ICE deported less than half the number of people from the interior as Trump did. Homan has indicated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s first priority will be to go after the 1.4 million documented immigrants who have committed crimes or who have had their day (or years) in immigration court and been ordered removed. This docket will keep ICE busy for a while. Still, the cases are relatively low-hanging fruit without the need for extensive due process.
Meanwhile, we can expect to see a resumption of enforcement targeted at employers who hire illegal workers and often exploit them and fail to pay appropriate payroll taxes and maintain safe working conditions. Of course, any undocumented workers encountered in those operations should also be put on the path to removal.
A little more worksite enforcement will go a long way toward encouraging more voluntary compliance by employers, who will clean up their hiring to avoid the cost and reputational damage of being shut down by a raid. As one staffing company executive told a reporter, “Once one of the plants is raided or there’s an audit, everybody will start to scramble at that time.”
Just as employers will change their behavior, so, too, will those living here illegally, especially when the millions of work permits improperly granted begin to expire. When people weigh the benefits and risks of remaining here with dwindling opportunities for employment, they will realize that the better choice is to return to their home countries along with their families and whatever nest egg they have accumulated.
Trump will have to endure a relentless narrative that these measures are cruel and heartless, but Americans will welcome the relief. Curtailing mass illegal migration will open up jobs for millions of sidelined Americans, just as it did after the last significant pause in immigration 100 years ago. It will also preserve scarce public resources to invest in American communities instead of resettlement programs.
Finally, it will restore public faith in our government’s management of legal immigration, which was significantly eroded over the last four years.
Editor’s note: Jessica Vaughan is director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. She wrote this for InsideSources.com. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.
