According to Edison Research, Trump made a surprising political comeback by defeating Democrat Kamala Harris, assuring supporters that America had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
According to six former Trump officials and allies, Donald Trump is anticipated to rally agencies throughout the U.S. government to assist him in deporting record numbers of immigrants, expanding on his first-term initiatives to use all available resources and compel so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions to cooperate…
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Supporters of Trump, some of whom may serve in his second term, expect the Republican president-elect to urge the U.S. military and foreign ambassadors to fulfill his campaign pledge of mass deportations. Cooperation with Republican-led states would be part of the endeavor, and federal funds would be used as pressure against recalcitrant places.
Trump promised a massive immigration crackdown when he retook the White House. His pledge to deport a record number of immigrants—an initiative that Trump’s running mate JD Vance said might remove one million people annually—was the cornerstone of his reelection campaign.
Trump’s deportation campaign, according to immigrant groups, would be expensive, polarizing, and cruel, causing families to be split up and communities to be destroyed. According to Edison Research exit surveys, 56% of voters said that most illegal immigrants should be allowed to apply for legal status, while 39% of voters believed that they should be deported.
Throughout his term from 2017 to 2021, Trump found it difficult to increase deportations. Government statistics show that Biden deported more aliens in fiscal year 2023 than any Trump year, including speedier “returns” to Mexico by U.S. border agents as well as immigration removals.
However, a deportation campaign that targets millions of people would need a significant increase in the number of police, detention facilities, and immigration court judges. An advocacy group for immigrants, the American Immigration Council, calculated that deporting 13 million illegal immigrants in the United States would cost $968 billion over a little over ten years.
In a late October interview, Tom Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who is anticipated to join the next administration, stated that the number of deportations would depend on the availability of detention space and possible personnel.
“It all depends on what the budget is,” he stated.
Even while the new Trump administration could learn from his first term’s experience, it may once more run into opposition from federal workers who have opposing views, such as police who assess applicants for asylum.
Immigrant advocacy organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union have been prepared for legal disputes in the event that Trump pushes the limits of his legal power once more.
More than 15 immigration-focused attorneys with the ACLU’s national office prepared for a potential Trump comeback throughout the year, according to Lee Gelernt, an attorney who spearheaded the opposition to the controversial family separation program.
Gelernt noted, “We definitely need to be coordinated and have more resources because I think they will come in much more prepared.”
Several Trump supporters said that Trump may act more forcefully at the State Department in particular than he did in his first term.
The acceptance of their inhabitants by other nations will be a crucial consideration; Trump had little success in this regard during his first term. At times, the Trump administration has had trouble persuading other countries in the area, including Mexico, to take action to prevent migrants from heading toward the border between the United States and Mexico.
According to Ken Cuccinelli, the former acting deputy secretary of the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Homeland Security, forceful appointments would be crucial since the State Department is a “roadblock” for immigration enforcement.
Christopher Landau, who served as the United States ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021, recently expressed his frustration with certain U.S. ambassadors’ unwillingness to address immigration enforcement.
In an October panel discussion hosted by the immigration restriction advocacy group Center for Immigration Studies, Landau stated, “Nobody really thought that was their problem.”
About half of ICE’s 21,000 staff members work in the Homeland Security Investigations division, which is more concerned with transnational crimes like drug smuggling and child abuse than with immigration enforcement. Several Trump supporters stated that the unit would have to devote more attention to immigration.
In recent years, HSI has disassociated itself from ICE’s immigration operations, claiming that its investigators’ inability to gain confidence in immigrant communities was a result of their fear of deportation.
The creator of Trump’s first-term immigration policy, Stephen Miller, stated in 2023 that National Guard forces from friendly states might be sent to hostile states to help with deportations, which would probably lead to legal disputes.
In what is certain to be a legal fight, Trump intends to swiftly deport suspected gang members under the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law.
The left-wing Brennan Center for Justice claims that the statute has been applied three times: during World War One, World War Two, and the War of 1812, when it was used to support the establishment of internment camps for individuals of German, Italian, and Japanese ancestry.
The statute should be repealed by Congress, according to the Brennan Center and others.
“A second Trump administration would try to use this law to justify indefinite detention and remove people from the country quickly and without judicial review,” said Naureen Shah, deputy director of government affairs for the American Civil Liberties Union, in a late October letter.
The Trump administration would have to demonstrate that the immigrants were dispatched by a foreign government, according to George Fishman, a former Trump administration official at DHS.
Fishman stated, “I worry a little about overpromising.”
