President-elect Donald Trump threatened mass deportation throughout the campaign, and while the scale of the plan remains unknown, the features of the proposal are an unusual homage to former President Barack Obama, who was dubbed the “deporter-in-chief” by Democrats and immigrant groups.
While Trump’s allies have proposed harsh methods to jail and deport those living in the United States illegally, the proposals are, in many ways, identical with how Immigration and Customs Enforcement has traditionally conducted operations. And at the forefront is Tom Homan, an immigration law enforcement veteran who served under the Obama administration and has been appointed by Trump as border czar.
“Many of the same strategies are being revived. “What Tom is talking about are Obama-esque things,” said John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director under Obama, warning that it will likely be a “harsher version” of what was done under the Obama administration.
“He’s going to have to do more draconian things to do a million deportations in a year,” Sandweg pointed out.
Trump has previously referred to the Eisenhower administration’s extensive deportation effort, a forceful and unprecedented sweep that resulted in the wholesale expulsion of undocumented immigrants. A program like that would represent a significant shift in interior policing compared to previous years.
However, Trump aides have openly articulated a plan that is similar to previous administrations.
Homan has stated frequently that he intends to prioritize public safety and national security threats, focusing efforts on eradicating them first. ICE has generally been told to adhere to that process, including under President Joe Biden.
However, Homan warned that if more unauthorized immigrants are encountered, they may also be apprehended. That happened under the Obama administration.
“We’re going to focus right away on public safety threats. What mayor or governor would not want public safety threats removed from their communities? In a recent interview with television celebrity Dr. Phil McGraw, Homan stated, “Help us or get out of the way.”
“If you force us into the neighborhood, we will locate a bad guy. “There are probably others we’ll find, and they’ll be arrested as well,” he added.
Trump’s ideas also include resuming family detention, which has been strongly opposed by immigrant groups and was abolished by Biden. During Obama’s presidency, however, family detention was expanded in response to an increase in the number of families and children crossing the US southern border.
Obama and Biden also had to use military sites to temporarily detain migrants during border surges. Trump has promised to do the same, but it is unclear how that will work and whether the bases will be used for immigrants detained in the US.
“They aren’t doing anything new. “None of the ideas that are being floated are novel,” said Jason Houser, former ICE director of staff during the Biden administration, suggesting that the main distinction would be scale and volume.
Immigrant organizations also believe that the rhetoric around mass deportation has instilled additional fear in the immigrant population.
However, Trump and his team are already dealing with the realities that hindered his first term and his predecessors’ efforts to address the illegal population in the United States: a lack of resources and personnel.
During his first term, Trump deported more than 1.5 million people, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
That is around half of the 2.9 million deportations carried out during Barack Obama’s first term, and less than the 1.9 million carried out during Obama’s second term. It’s comparable to Biden’s 1.49 million deportations, according to revised figures provided with HEADLINESFOREVER. These estimates do not include the millions of immigrants who were turned away at the border as a result of Trump’s Covid 19-era policy, which was in effect for some of Biden’s term.
In an interview with Kristen Welker of NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month, Trump admitted that arresting and deporting immigrants is a difficult undertaking.
“It’s a really tough thing to do,” he added, adding, “you know, you have rules, regulations, and laws. They entered illegally.
Trump stated that his administration’s mass deportation measures will target people with criminal records, but he also hinted that it may go beyond deporting criminals – without identifying who the “other people outside of criminals” are.
According to an ICE spokesman, there are around 1.4 million persons in the United States who have received final orders of removal. However, many of them cannot be returned to their home countries either they refuse to accept them, or there is still some hope for them through the immigration system.
Obama deported almost 400,000 people in one year, but a big number of them were recent border crossers. Targeting individuals who are already in the nation presents a greater difficulty for Trump.
“There is a distinction between arresting and deporting someone. We’ve focused on ICE’s power to arrest people, but unless they make significant changes to the immigration process, the act of deporting someone requires some type of process,” a former Homeland Security official told HEADLINESFOREVER.
HEADLINESFOREVER recently revealed that Trump’s administration is examining regional capacity for detaining migrants, which is likely to lead to consideration of building new detention centers in larger urban regions. Homeland Security authorities have previously identified a number of places where jail capacity can be expanded in preparation for border surges.
ICE is now funded for around 40,000 detention beds.
Trump’s administration has also been preparing a potential national emergency declaration to free up Pentagon resources, which was done during Trump’s first term and resulted in lawsuits, and modifying that proclamation to clear the way for increased detention capacity.
In an interview with Time magazine, Trump restated his vow to use the military to deport migrants who entered the US illegally, saying he will use the military “up to the maximum level of what the law allows” for deportations.