President-elect Trump has made ambitious promises on the border and immigration, including the largest deportation operation in history.
But as with Trump’s first term, his immigration agenda faces significant obstacles.
Trump has seen himself tied up in legal battles, with some of his policies being struck down in courts on technical or procedural grounds.
He also suggests that any of the roughly 13 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. could be deported, so he doesn’t have the manpower to match his rhetoric.
“I think he will break all norms and laws to do what he wants. The question is whether he will really have a (deportation) program as extensive as he has described. Because the reality he describes would be quite devastating to our nation’s economy and workforce,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas). ), whose district is located along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Despite questions about the economic wisdom and feasibility of mass deportations, Trump is inheriting a powerful immigration enforcement agency with ample power to deport individuals.
But he promised to scale back the previous administration’s efforts, given that the Biden administration hit a 10-year high with 271,484 deportations in 2024, according to an annual Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report released Thursday.
Expanding beyond existing mass deportations is likely to face new challenges in terms of logistics, legal, economics, and politics.
resources and reality
President Trump faces a difficult challenge in delivering on the level of deportations he promised voters.
He suggested that anyone not legally in the country could be subject to deportation. This marks a departure from a bipartisan administration that has focused limited resources on deporting people who pose a risk to public safety.
To do so, an astronomical budget increase is needed.
Tom Homan, the incoming Border Patrol chief, acknowledged Wednesday that the size of the deportation program will depend on the budget allocated by Congress, but said the incoming administration will target all undocumented immigrants for deportation.
“I don’t have a phone number. We want to arrest as many people as are in the country illegally,” Homan said on “The Source” with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “If you’re here illegally, you can’t get off the table. This is against the law. “It is a crime to enter this country illegally.”
The American Immigration Council estimates that deporting about 13 million undocumented immigrants at a rate of 1 million per year would cost about $88 billion, exceeding the entire current budget of the Department of Homeland Security.
“There are still many unknowns until we hear directly from Republicans what exactly they plan to do with the budget for this program and whether future presidents plan to deport as many people as they have promised. This is a hypothetical thing,” Escobar said.
She noted that President Trump has changed some of his rhetoric after facing pressure from key agricultural lobbies and business leaders who fear the loss of their workforce.
“Then he started talking about focusing only on criminals, which is what most of what happens today anyway,” Escobar added. The Biden administration has indicated that it is prioritizing the removal of people with serious criminal records.
Immigrant groups, which have lower crime rates than native-born citizens, are fighting additional increased security from agencies including ICE, Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol, as well as higher penalties for illegal acts ranging from infractions to felonies.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (DY), who will take over as Speaker of the Hispanic Council in January, pointed to “offenses involving moral turpitude” as a tool in immigration law that federal officials can use to deport or expel certain immigrants. To prevent their status cases from progressing.
“If you went to a candy store and played the numbers game and the candy store got raided and you were there, they took you. And if there was no documentation, it will be considered or considered. A deportable offense. Or urinating on the street, luring a prostitute or jumping off a turnstile are all deportable offences,” Espaillat said.
Immigration advocates say there are few obstacles preventing the incoming Trump administration from making full use of these tools. Aside from the huge amount of money needed to get rid of that many people.
“It could be funding. I think we can use legal tools. Certainly TPS status and DACA could be revoked by the administration,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). It referred to humanitarian programs that rely on administrative action to grant protection from deportation.
“The (Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Accountability) Act of 1996, which I voted against, allows for the expedited deportation of people who have been in the United States undocumented for less than two years and within 200 miles of the border. Now that includes the coasts, so that’s 80% of the U.S. population. The problem is what procedure is used to determine ‘less than 2 years’. “Most of the undocumented people have stayed in the country for more than two years, so we will see what efforts they make,” he said.
The Trump team’s own cost projections fall short of the billions of dollars others say are needed. Homan said meeting the goal would require $86 billion, more than he previously said would require at least 100,000 detention beds and a significant increase in border agents.
Some Republicans are rallying to get Trump the resources he needs.
In a letter led by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and signed by conservatives in both houses of Congress, lawmakers called for funding to hire “thousands” more border and immigration agents to ensure a “significant increase” in detention and detention facilities. requested. “Incentivize self-exile” with new financial penalties for people who are not here legally.
suit
Some of Trump’s plans are certain to face legal challenges from immigration and civil rights groups.
He promised to abolish birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the Constitution and one that, if pursued, could spark war.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the incoming member of the House Judiciary Committee and a former professor of constitutional law, said Trump would need to go through a lengthy process of amending the Constitution to achieve that goal.
“Presidents past and future are talking about abolishing birthright citizenship guaranteed by the first sentence of the 14th Amendment. So if that’s actually the first executive order they’re talking about, we’re going to have to fight them on that. “If they propose to change the Constitution and do it the right way, we will oppose it,” Raskin said.
Trump also said he would use the military to help carry out mass deportations, a controversial use of force that could exceed some authorities.
Immigration advocates believe this is illegal because even emergency powers do not allow the military to arrest and detain people.
Opponents challenged Trump’s immigration policies during his first term, winning numerous court victories against efforts to end protections against deportation, citizenship questions on the census and other policies.
But Trump’s “Muslim ban” shows the potential to bite the apple again and again. Courts struck down the first two travel bans, but Trump continued to revise the countries on the list to fight discrimination claims.
The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the third ban, which also banned travel from North Korea and Venezuela.
limits of executive power
Many of Trump’s previous immigration plans were scrapped not because of their merits but because of problems with the way his administration pursued them.
Some of his immigration policies were found to have violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which sets out strict guidelines for how the government creates new rules and regulations.
That was the case with Trump’s policy to force asylum-seeking immigrants to first seek protection elsewhere during their travels, and the court rejected the government’s argument that mandatory advance notice should be bypassed to avoid a surge in applications.
In other cases, courts have struck down Trump policies created through executive orders that exceeded the office’s authority.
This included Trump’s efforts to cut off protections for Dreamers and his effort to use emergency declarations to fund a border wall in excess of the amount allocated by Congress.
And Trump saw some of his policies fail late in his term as vacancies were filled inadequately.
As Senate-confirmed officials leave their positions, some immigration positions have been filled by people who did not go through the vetting process.
Courts later struck down some orders signed by acting Department of Homeland Security officials, such as Chad Wolf, ruling they lacked the authority to enact such measures.
If President Trump fills a vacancy by bypassing the Senate confirmation process, he could once again find the orders of his acting officials invalidated.
But Escobar is not convinced that these laws will ultimately prove to be much of a barrier to Trump.
“The lawsuits are going to slow him down,” she said. “Honestly, there are no longer people around him who encourage him to follow the norms and laws, and I think he will trample on the Constitution. I think he will trample on existing laws. … I have a feeling he’s going to break the law and the Constitution left and right.”
