In the final month of his presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump double About his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history.
Last week, Trump received enthusiastic applause from the public in Reading, Pennsylvania. gathering crowd After saying he would “drive these people out of the country” and “rapidly deport them.” in Aurora, ColoradoFriday, President Trump told the rally participants He will “save Aurora and all the towns that have been invaded and conquered.”
Immigration researchers, lawyers and economists point to enormous constitutional, humanitarian and economic problems posed by President Trump’s oft-repeated promises. But beyond the expected damage to immigrant families, communities and local economies, funding for the roundups and deportations of some 11 million people is nearly impossible, according to a CBS News analysis of U.S. budget and immigration court data. They say it’s impossible.
Even if Congress approved spending hundreds of billions of dollars, it would take much longer than four years to deport all illegal immigrants living in the United States, the analysis found.
A CBS News analysis of immigration system data found:
Arresting and deporting just one million people could cost taxpayers about $20 billion. Deporting 11 million people over four years would cost the country more than 20 times what it has spent deporting U.S. residents in a single year over the past five years. New funding would require approval by a majority of both houses of Congress. Assuming that Mr. Trump actually gets the money and can rapidly expand immigration enforcement and court staffing, the backlog will increase (not decrease) by millions. What happened in the last two administrations? Despite promising to deport millions, Trump’s own administration in 2016deported 325,660 people during his fiscal year in office.
Taxpayer deportation costs
The estimated average cost to deport a person over the past five fiscal years was $19,599, according to a CBS News analysis of federal data. This number is based on funding for each step of the deportation process, including arrest, detention, immigration court proceedings, and deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
Migrant crossings at the southern border increased from 2021 to 2023. record high priceImmigration and Customs Enforcement deployed about one-sixth of the staff normally dedicated to deportations to the border to assist Customs and Border Protection. (At the intersection Since being rejected. )
ICE also title 42an emergency health authority enacted during the pandemic that allowed Border Patrol to turn back migrants attempting to cross the border. Fewer people have been deported from the interior of the United States in recent years than in previous years, increasing the cost per deportation.
But even when Trump was president and the number of border crossings was lower than during the post-pandemic surge, it still cost $14,614 to deport a person. Deporting all of the 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the United States at the time would cost between $40 billion and $54 billion per year during the next presidential term, for a total of up to $216 billion. will rise to Only $9 billion was allocated to ICE last year.
The lower end of that annual estimate, $40 billion, would be enough to provide child tax credits to 20 million families each year and more than double the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s entire budget. Over four years, this amount will reach between $160 billion and $216 billion, equivalent to the cost of building about 500,000 new homes nationwide.
A similar analysis by the American Immigration Council estimates that the total cost of deporting 11 million people is even higher, at $315 billion.
“It’s impossible to get a number close to 11 million.”
President Trump said local law enforcement would help with mass deportations because “we know their names, we know their serial numbers.” Experts say the situation is not that simple.
“One of the premises of Mr. Trump’s proposal is that local police and sheriffs would work together,” said Abigail Andrews, director of the Center for Comparative Migration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. “We know that over the past several decades, one of the main ways cities and states have opposed immigration processes has been through whether their police departments cooperate with ICE or not.”
President Trump said he would deploy the National Guard to identify and detain immigrants who entered the country illegally. The plan could face legal hurdles because the law prohibits the use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement without Congressional authorization. In response, President Trump asserted that illegal immigrants are “not civilians.”
Law enforcement could also end up racially profiling citizens and non-citizens alike to identify illegal immigrants living in the United States.
“There is no way to accomplish this without serious violations of civil liberties,” said Donald Kerwin, editor and founder of the Journal on Migration and Human Security. “At the end of the day, we’re never going to get anywhere near 11 million people.”
playing cards promised Despite mass deportations during his 2016 presidential bid, ICE deported only 325,660 people from the interior of the United States during the fiscal year of his term.
Mass deportations are also unlikely to be completed within four years, depending on their scale. U.S. immigration courts currently face a backlog of 3.7 million cases, according to records obtained by Syracuse University. According to a study by the Congressional Research Service, it would take the immigration court system another eight years and an additional 700 judges (almost twice the existing staff) to completely clear the existing backlog.
People who receive a “notice to appear” in immigration court can schedule court dates years in the future.
Using a tool developed by Kerwin and his son, independent researcher Brendan Kerwin, CBS News estimates that if courts accept 11 million new cases, the immigration backlog could reach 1,350 by 2028. It was estimated that there would be 10,000 cases.
The tool takes into account the rate at which immigration judges process cases, the number of new cases each year, and the number of judges hired. The Office of Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, plans to hire 150 new judges in fiscal year 2024. If the government hired 150 new judges each year for the next four years, it would serve 11 million undocumented immigrants with court notices and leave courts with a backlog of 13.5 million cases by fiscal year 2028.
President Trump may take steps to eliminate legal procedures for some immigrants, which could lead to fewer detention procedures. Under a 1996 law, anyone arrested within 100 miles of the border within two weeks of illegally crossing the border can be deported without a court hearing. The previous Trump administration expanded The law applies to the entire country and to illegal immigrants who entered the United States illegally and have lived in the United States for less than two years.
Mass deportations will reduce employment
Deporting millions of immigrants could have negative effects on the U.S. economy and job market beyond the costs outlined above.
One study found that President Obama’s Secure Communities program, which deported nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants, not only pulled those immigrants out of the labor force, but also had a ripple effect that reduced employment and hourly wages for U.S.-born people. It turned out that it brought about. The researchers scaled their findings to estimate that for every 1 million unauthorized workers deported, 88,000 native-born jobs are lost.
An analysis by the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics released last month reached a similar conclusion. Researchers found that mass deportation of even just 1.3 million illegal immigrants would lower U.S. GDP and reduce U.S. employment by 0.8% by 2028. A large-scale deportation of more than 8 million immigrants would have an even bigger impact, reducing employment to below 5.1% of global employment. Current baseline.
According to a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, illegal immigrants pay $59.4 billion in federal taxes and $37.3 billion in state and local taxes. More than a third of that money went to Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment insurance.
More than 4 million families could be separated
Mass deportations will not only reduce jobs for citizens, but will also affect their families. According to data from the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 4.1 million mixed-status families living in the United States. Approximately 4.4 million U.S.-born children live with undocumented parents.
Children whose parents are deported “often drop out of school and end up with trauma, mental health issues, and behavioral problems,” said Andrews, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Spouses often have to deal with not only the incredible emotional cost of having their partner deported, but also the financial cost of having to relocate or take another job. .”
And immigrants facing deportation “end up being extremely disoriented and unable to survive,” Andrews said.
“The economic costs will be very high, but the social, emotional and community costs will also be very high,” she added.
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