If Donald Trump makes a comeback to the White House, he has promised to execute a “mass deportation” of over 11 million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States.

He had made a similar commitment during his initial term, which faced logistical and legal hurdles that prevented implementation.

This time, however, experts believe the outcome might be different.

A second Trump administration would be more adept at leveraging the extensive bureaucracy, as noted by César García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University and author of “Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants.”

Additionally, there would be fewer legal challenges this time around. During his first term, Trump appointed numerous judges, thereby altering the judicial landscape that previously hindered his immigration enforcement ambitions.

Mark Morgan, who was acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under Trump, stated that a substantial increase in enforcement is feasible if they adopt a comprehensive and aggressive approach across government.

“The focus will remain on deporting convicted criminals,” Morgan explained. “However, no one will be exempt.”

If Trump secures a second term, experts suggest that public sentiment might support controversial actions, such as separating immigrant parents from their children for prosecution purposes.

A recent poll by YSL News/Suffolk University indicated that 45% of participants favor Trump’s mass deportation plan, while 49% oppose it, with 4% undecided. This survey involving 1,000 likely voters was conducted via landline and mobile between October 14 and 18 and carries a margin of error of around 3.1 percentage points.

While Trump has not unveiled a specific mass deportation strategy, an analysis by YSL News of various interviews and speeches from Trump and his former advisors suggests the following intentions:

• Utilize emergency and executive powers to bypass existing laws that include protections for immigrants;
• Invoke provisions of a law from the 18th century known as the Alien Enemies Act, previously used to detain individuals of Japanese, German, and Italian descent during World War II;
• Enlist local and state law enforcement, particularly in Republican areas, to locate and detain undocumented immigrants;
• Utilize the U.S. military and National Guard in immigration enforcement operations;
• Reallocate federal personnel and resources to bolster these efforts.

According to the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, deporting 1 million individuals annually could cost around $88 billion each year. This would necessitate an exceptional increase in law enforcement personnel, detention facilities, immigration courtrooms, and transport capacity.

As former Trump adviser Stephen Miller stated on a conservative podcast earlier this year, “If President Trump is re-elected, the border will be secured; the military will be deployed; the National Guard will be mobilized, and undocumented immigrants will be sent home.”

Who is targeted for deportation?

Pew Research estimates that there are approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Most of these individuals do not have any criminal records, and their backgrounds can differ widely—from asylum seekers who crossed the border to people who arrived on a tourist visa and overstayed.

Among these are about 1.3 million individuals who have received deportation orders but are still in the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

“This situation partly arises from a lack of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, insufficient flight capacity, and some countries refusing to accept their citizens back,” she explained.

Those with existing removal orders may be the first targets, along with the hundreds of thousands of immigrants currently incarcerated on local or state criminal charges, according to Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies.

“These are the easiest targets,” he noted, referring to individuals identified through the Secure Communities program, which connected local law enforcement to ICE databases during the Obama administration.

ICE reported that, as of July, it had over 660,000 noncitizens with criminal backgrounds in its records.

More than half of the 11 million undocumented individuals initially came to the U.S. legally but overstayed their visas, as reported by the Center for Migration Studies. Others entered the country unlawfully years ago and might now be married to U.S. citizens or have U.S. citizen children, potentially making them eligible for legal status in the future.

Additionally, there are hundreds of thousands benefiting from temporary programs that could be terminated unilaterally by the president.

“Practically speaking,” García Hernández said, the Trump administration “appears determined to broaden the scope of potential deportations to millions, including those permitted to be in the U.S. by the federal government.”

According to the National Immigration Forum, over 860,000 individuals from 16 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, and Haiti, benefit from the temporary protected status program, which can be revoked by Homeland Security at any moment.

Moreover, approximately 530,000 young immigrants who came to the U.S. as children with their parents when they crossed the border illegally qualify for Temporary Protected Status or DACA. Trump had sought to end this program, initiated under Obama, but was halted by the Supreme Court when it held a more liberal stance at the time.

Currently, 1.6 million asylum seekers are pending hearings for their cases, according to updated data.

to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

“These individuals are not those who sneaked into the country,” stated Mario Russell, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies. “They are individuals who have received authorization to have their cases examined.”

‘Comprehensive operations’: The government’s approach to finding immigrants for deportation

The primary obstacle in mass deportations would be identifying and locating the millions of undocumented immigrants who are not listed in government records. Trump has suggested that local and state law enforcement could aid federal agencies.

The federal administration “can utilize resources from the broader intelligence community to create targeting strategies,” Morgan mentioned. This initiative would likely be spearheaded by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center. Other Homeland Security agencies, including the FBI and U.S. Marshals, could also be involved.

“You can expect the NTC to be the central hub receiving intelligence from various agencies,” Morgan added. “State and local entities are key players in this effort.”

If such a collaboration occurs, Russell warned it could result in “severe violations of civil rights” driven by inadequate evidence, subpar forensics, and flawed profiling.

He expressed concerns that these investigations would result in home visits and workplace raids, likening them to “essentially dragnet operations.”

Do immigrants hold the same rights as citizens?

Immigrants facing allegations of being unlawfully present in the U.S. do possess constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the government cannot deport individuals without providing them “due process,” which includes allowing them to present their case in court as to why they should be permitted to remain.

Undocumented immigrants are entitled to the same fundamental rights as other criminal defendants, such as the right to legal representation, protection against unlawful searches, the right to remain silent, and protection against cruel or unusual punishments.

“You cannot simply take people off the street, imprison them, place them on a plane, and send them away,” asserted Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney.

However, this does not mean that unauthorized immigrants enjoy all the same rights in practice.

The Supreme Court has determined that standard immigration court processes are civil rather than criminal, which means detained immigrants facing deportation only have a right to legal counsel if they can afford it.

Individuals apprehended within two weeks of entering the country and within 100 miles of the border may be deported without a court hearing or legal representation.

Emergency powers can also waive certain rights.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump activated a public health statute dating back to the 1940s known as Title 42. This emergency authority permitted both his administration and the Biden administration to rapidly return migrants to Mexico or their home countries without allowing them to make claims for residency. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported over 2.7 million migrant expulsions at the Southwest border between 2020 and 2023.

Ken Cuccinelli, who acted as the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Trump and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, stated that immigrants with deportation orders have restricted rights.

“In terms of the deportation process, undocumented individuals do not legally possess the same rights as an American facing criminal charges,” Cuccinelli explained.

How would Trump detain individuals awaiting deportation?

To grasp the magnitude of a plan to deport 11 million people, it is essential to consider that there were 1.2 million inmates held in all the state and federal prisons throughout the country in 2022, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Historically, immigration detention has operated on a much smaller scale.

The current congressional budget facilitates ICE to detain an average of 34,000 individuals daily. ICE operates over 190 facilities across more than 40 states and U.S. territories for the purpose of detaining immigrants, as per agency statistics.

Trump has claimed he wouldn’t require substantial detention facilities because deportations would be conducted rapidly.

Nonetheless, many immigrants have the right to argue their case to remain, and there is already a backlog of 3.5 million cases within the immigration court system. This backlog could result in delays of months or even years for hearings.

Additionally, foreign governments must consent to accept deportees. Such negotiations can be prolonged or may not succeed; nations like China and Venezuela have previously refused to take back their citizens.

The American Immigration Council estimates that the nation would need to establish 1,000 new immigration courtrooms and increase ICE’s detention capacity by 24 times in order to accommodate all individuals pending hearings.

Old law, new application: the Alien Enemies Act

Trump has expressed his intention to invoke the Alien Enemies Act from 1798 to expedite deportations. The Republican Party has included Trump’s strategy in its platform, referencing this law to justify the removal of identified or suspected gang members, drug traffickers, and cartel associates based on claims that their presence constitutes an invasion by a foreign entity.

However, the courts may refuse to grant the president what could only be considered wartime powers concerning immigration. Nevertheless, courts have sometimes declined to challenge a presidential administration’s interpretation of what constitutes an “invasion,” or affirmed that presidents possess the ultimate authority.

Katherine Ebright, an attorney who examines wartime powers at the Brennan Center for Justice, indicated that the Alien Enemies Act is predicated on the identity of foreign citizenship rather than actions or legal status.

“The critical factor is your place of birth or your citizenship tied to the designated foreign enemy,” Ebright explained.

Trump has also pledged to deploy the military and National Guard in his initiatives. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have previously utilized the National Guard to assist border enforcement, but experts indicate that executing the Insurrection Act would be necessary to have soldiers actively rounding up immigrants across the nation.

Additionally, there is a possible role for the military, suggested Morgan, in organizing detention logistics. Military bases nationwide could potentially serve as facilities for holding immigrants.

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He mentioned that this involves immigrants, specifically families and non-violent criminals.

“We house them in family residential centers where they have access to medical care and other essential services while we initiate the process of returning them to their home country together as a family,” Morgan explained. “The military can assist in managing these types of facilities.”

A Look Back at Deportation Initiatives

Trump has often stated his intention to base his deportation strategy on an initiative from 70 years ago led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Eisenhower administration’s operation in 1954 aimed at detaining hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and individuals of Mexican descent, significantly utilizing state and local law enforcement. This led to mass detentions that included U.S. citizens among those being deported alongside migrants.

However, no president has overseen more deportations than Barack Obama, who, during 2012 alone, expelled over 407,000 individuals, according to TRAC data. Throughout his eight years in office, Obama’s administration recorded more than 3.1 million deportations conducted by ICE.

In Trump’s presidency, the peak deportation year was 2019, during which his administration removed more than 269,000 individuals, based on the same TRAC statistics.

Throughout all four years of Trump’s presidency, ICE documented nearly 932,000 deportations.