Illegal immigration and control over the nation’s borders will be one of the major issues in this fall’s elections, and a key aspect of that issue is the number of people who are present in the country today – and what should be done about them. Should he win reelection, former President Donald Trump is reportedly being advised to deport almost 20 million illegal aliens, in a project similar to the United Kingdom’s Rwanda policy:
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Donald Trump’s allies are drawing up detailed proposals to implement the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s plans for an unprecedented immigration crackdown, including an effort that would deport asylum seekers to other countries, according to people involved in the effort.
A cadre of former Trump administration officials, Trump supporters and conservative immigration wonks are writing executive orders, policy memos and other documents in a bid to transform campaign rhetoric into policy. The goal, the people said, is to be ready on the first day of a Trump presidency to stem the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, unwind President Biden’s immigration agenda and lay the groundwork for what the former president has said would be the largest mass deportation in U.S. history.
The UK’s Rwanda project has to do with the deportation of Rwandan immigrants from the UK, in which the British government plans to repatriate over 50,000 illegal immigrants. But as the Wall Street Journal reported, it has been tied up in UK courts:
In 2020, the Trump administration struck a deal with Guatemala on a short-lived program that sent back roughly 1,000 migrants from neighboring El Salvador and Honduras to seek asylum there. Advisers want to revive the idea, in part inspired by an accord struck between the U.K. and Rwanda in 2022 that would allow the U.K. to send migrants seeking asylum to the East African country instead. (The plan hasn’t gone into effect yet because of legal challenges.)
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The plan, whatever form it takes, will be a massive logistical undertaking, one official told the WSJ:
“The logistical challenges will be really significant,” a former senior Trump administration official said.
In addition to recruiting enough manpower to arrest migrants and opening up enough detention space to hold them, another important roadblock looms: The migrants who have arrived in the U.S. under the Biden administration aren’t currently legally deportable. And for those who are, many of their home countries won’t take them back. The executive actions that Trump’s advisers are planning are intended to circumvent those constraints without action from Congress.
Deporting 20 million people – roughly six percent of the American population – would be a massive undertaking, and costs would likely run into the billions. All 20 million would have to be identified, located, apprehended, fed, and housed until arrangements are made to send them home. When their turn comes to be deported, they would have to be escorted to wherever they are being deported to – put on the plane, bus, or ship with a one-way ticket, and advised that serious consequences would result from their trying to sneak into the United States illegally in the future. And that doesn’t even take into account any illegals who have outstanding warrants or who have in any other way identified as being sought by law enforcement.
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It would be a huge, expensive project, but unlike so many of the federal government’s huge, expensive projects, it would have an identified goal, a desired end-state, and would be worth the expenditure.
Regardless of whether such a massive deportation effort could take place – and bear in mind, there would be many instant and bothersome legal challenges – it should be combined with other efforts, like crackdowns on employers that hire illegals, or people that house them, or even the NGOs who scoop them up and transport them around the country.
Here’s the problem: I think the legal challenges to any such mass deportation would tie things up for the duration of a second Trump administration. It’s unclear if Trump’s advisers are taking this into account.