WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to execute mass deportations of immigrants in the U.S. illegally will involve the military and a national emergency declaration, he confirmed Monday.
In a Nov. 8 post on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, Tom Fitton, who leads the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, wrote: “GOOD NEWS: Reports are the incoming @RealDonaldTrump administration prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”
Trump responded early Monday: “TRUE!!!”
Asked for more details of the plan, Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that “President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history.”
Advocates for immigrants, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have said they are prepared to respond with legal action.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the left-leaning American Immigration Council, cautioned that there is no national emergency authority permitting the U.S. to carry out deportations.
During his first term, Trump bypassed Congress to divert Pentagon funds to expand the border wall by declaring a national emergency. President Biden terminated the emergency order just after he took office in 2021.
Reichlin-Melnick said he doesn’t take Trump’s response to Fitton’s post as confirmation that U.S. military troops will be deployed to carry out deportations. Troops have previously been used to provide logistical support at the border, but they haven’t been directly involved in rounding up migrants.
“This is my recollection of the last four years of the Trump administration — they say a lot of things and when the actual policy rolls out, it often looks quite different,” he said.
More broadly, Trump and his allies have conflated discussion of recently arrived migrants with the broader population of longtime undocumented immigrants, said Reichlin-Melnick.
One potential wrench in Trump’s mass deportation plan: Anyone who was released by border authorities into the U.S. during the last four years is already facing removal proceedings and cannot be removed until that often years-long process concludes. As of last month, immigration courts have a record 1.5 million pending asylum cases.
Deportations would also target immigrants who entered the country long before Biden took office.
“They tend to suggest that really all they’re talking about is criminals and recent arrivals when really that’s just a small portion of the undocumented population,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
Mass deportations were one of Trump’s top campaign promises — he said he would go after at least 15 million people who are in the U.S. illegally, though the total number of undocumented immigrants is probably lower. During his last presidency, Trump deported about 1.5 million immigrants, according to a Migration Policy Institute analysis of federal figures, which the Biden administration is on pace to match.
Finding, detaining and deporting that many people would be costly and logistically challenging. On the campaign trail, Trump said his strategy would rely on military troops, friendly state and local law enforcement and wartime powers.
The ACLU Foundation of Southern California on Monday filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seeking records that would reveal how the agency’s Air Operations — its network of for-profit, commercial and privately chartered deportation flights — could be expanded to carry out a mass deportation program. The lawsuit says the secrecy surrounding the agency’s air operations has “masked responsibility for serious abuses and danger” on flights.
Trump chose Tom Homan, previously the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to oversee deportations as his “border czar.” Homan promised to resume workplace immigration raids and prioritize immigrants who pose threats to public safety and national security for deportation.
Trump also appointed South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has little experience with the Department of Homeland Security, to lead the agency. Trump’s longtime advisor Stephen Miller, who was behind much of his first term’s immigration agenda, will continue to play a role as deputy chief of policy.
Homan has said the administration will deport people who have been handed final removal orders by immigration judges. In fiscal year 2023, immigration agents removed 142,580 of the nearly 1.3 million people subject to those orders, according to federal figures.
CNN’s Jake Tapper asked House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday whether Americans are prepared for the economic disruption that deporting millions of people would cause, as well as the resulting images of families being ripped apart. Experts have predicted that mass deportations would cause labor shocks across key industries, including construction and agriculture, drive up grocery prices, and cause economic hardship for U.S. citizen children and others who lose a breadwinner.
“I’m not sure that’s what’s going to happen, Jake,” Johnson replied. “I think what the president’s talking about is beginning with the dangerous persons that we know are here. … So you start with that number, you’ve got by some counts as many as 3 or 4 million people that fit that category.”
There were 662,566 people with pending criminal charges or convictions on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s national docket as of July 21, according to a letter to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) from Patrick Lechleitner, the agency’s acting director. Some have been listed for decades because their country of citizenship won’t let the U.S. deport them back. Others are still serving jail or prison sentences for their crimes.
Tapper said Trump’s promise wasn’t just to get rid of criminals — it was to get rid of all undocumented immigrants.
“I’m not sure what the specific promise is,” Johnson replied. “I know the president said that he wanted to engage in the largest deportation effort probably in history, because that is what is called for.”
