The obstacles in executing Donald Trump's proposed mass deportation plan were well documented during the campaign trail. According to a study by The Washington Examiner in late October, implementing it would require substantial resources beyond the current capacity of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including increases in manpower, detention space, and air transportation which would require Congressional approval
Furthermore, the plan would likely face legal challenges from organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union. This is all without digging into the cost of deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants (based on the 2022 American Community Survey) which some experts estimate would cost the U.S. between $160 billion and $216 billion over a four-year presidency.
Now that Donald Trump has won the presidency, his mass deportation plan seems closer than ever and, judging by some of his first comments since the election, he isn't too worried about what it costs to get it done. "It's not a question of a price tag," he told NBC News. "It's not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they're going to go back to those countries because they're not staying here. There is no price tag."
Nevertheless, the voices against the viability of the plan are continuing to pop up. On Wednesday it was former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director, who laid out the obstacles once again, offering his insider POV from working during the Obama administration, as reported by The Hill.
"Trump is going to need a lot more ICE agents," he told NewsNation in an interview. "That's going to require a lot of appropriations from Congress." The administration would also need a massive number of "detention beds," something Sandweg said is far easier said than done. And last but not least, there is the current state of the U.S. immigration system:
"There are backlogs in the immigration courts. The Supreme Court has said that migrants are entitled to due process before they're deported. That means Trump is going to have to find a way to bypass those immigration courts."
Sandweg also went on to question the amount of planning put into the deportation plan during the campaign trail:
"I think during the campaign, just in all candor, I don't think they had a clear road map for how they're going to kind of overcome those challenges," he added.
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