What Trump’s mass deportation plan means for immigrants

US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the

largest deportation effort in US history

, vowing to ultimately deport all of the foreigners living in the country without permission. They are thought to number at least 11 million, which makes their expulsion en masse a colossal undertaking. Soon after taking office on Jan 20, Mr Trump issued a series of executive orders and other related directives intended to facilitate the project, which many policy analysts expect to fall short of his full ambition.

What is Mr Trump’s deportation plan?

Mr Trump has said his administration will first target undocumented immigrants who are criminals before turning to others without legal status. Mr Tom Homan, who will oversee the effort as the Trump administration’s border czar and served previously as acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has said that people who pose a threat to national security are also an early priority. 

Arrests will be “targeted”, Mr Homan told the CBS television programme 60 Minutes in November. “It’s not going to be a mass sweep of neighbourhoods,” he said. 

How have recent administrations approached deportations?

Over the past two decades, immigration authorities under both Democratic and Republican presidents have forcibly repatriated about 300,000 non-citizens a year on average using regular removal processes, with numbers especially high during the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama. In addition, roughly three million people were expelled from 2020 to 2023 using an emergency health authority invoked because of the Covid-19 crisis. 

What is new is Mr Trump’s promise to scale up arrests and deportations, with a goal of removing any foreigner in the country without permission. Mr Trump has also moved to strip deportation protections from large groups of migrants.

Who is vulnerable to deportation?

Any foreigner living in the US without permission faces the risk of arrest and eventual deportation. That includes individuals who crossed the border surreptitiously as well as those who entered lawfully but overstayed their visa or violated its terms. Even non-citizens with valid immigration status can face deportation if they commit a crime or are judged to be a threat to public safety.

Those at imminent risk of deportation amid Mr Trump’s crackdown are foreigners who have already been ordered out of the country by a federal immigration judge. An estimated 1.4 million people have pending deportation orders. Often, the orders have not been executed because immigration officials do not know where they are. Legislation passed by Congress in Mr Trump’s first week in office mandates the detention of any unauthorised immigrant accused of a violent crime or theft. 

At least half a million beneficiaries of a programme referred to as humanitarian parole face a cloudy future. These are citizens of four countries in turmoil – Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – who were given permission to enter the country and live and work for two years after passing a background check and securing a sponsor in the US. One of Mr Trump’s executive orders called for the termination of the programme, and immigration authorities have been given orders to arrest and quickly deport them.

Another one million people from 17 countries live in the US under a programme called Temporary Protected Status (TPS). It is intended to provide foreigners already in the US, regardless of their immigration status, with protections from deportation amid political strife, natural disasters or armed conflict in their home countries. Mr Trump has repeatedly said he would revoke TPS protections and tried to end the programme for multiple countries during his first administration.

Another group likely to worry is the so-called Dreamers – undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children who have lived in America for much or most of their lives. A federal programme established in 2012 called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) protects many, though not all, of them from deportation. In his first term, Mr Trump attempted unsuccessfully to abolish Daca. This time, he has expressed willingness to collaborate with Democrats to pass legislation ensuring Dreamers can remain in the US. 

Then there are the large numbers of unauthorised border crossers who, in recent years, have been allowed to remain in the US at least temporarily in order to make long-shot bids at winning asylum, available to people who can show they have a legitimate fear of persecution. Mr Trump’s orders aim to shut down options for new asylum-seekers. Those already in the country were given permission to remain while their immigration case is pending, but they face deportation if they do not show up at court hearings as ordered or commit a crime.

What are the challenges facing Mr Trump’s deportation plan?

Immigration authorities first will have to identify undocumented immigrants living in the US, who have an interest in remaining below the radar. To target specific foreigners, as Mr Homan has suggested, is a time-intensive process. Officers assigned to ICE’s fugitive task force often perform surveillance on a number of specific people to confirm their locations before teams fan out across a region to make arrests. 

Mr Trump will also need personnel beyond the ranks of the roughly 6,000 ICE officers who work for its enforcement and removal arm. He has in the past proposed using active-duty military troops and deputising local police and sheriffs’ deputies to carry out arrests and removals. 

The military began reinforcing its presence at the southern border in response to Mr Trump’s declaration of a national emergency there. But the initial moves do not call for troops to play a direct role in detaining migrants, which would open legal disputes about limits on the military’s role in domestic affairs. When it comes to help from police, Mr Trump’s plan faces opposition from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

In the past, once potential deportation cases among unauthorised foreigners living in the US were identified, they had to be adjudicated.

Those targeted for deportation have been entitled to a hearing in the immigration court system, which is overseen by the Justice Department. Immigrants generally have had the right to a lawyer at their own expense and could appeal against negative judgments to the department’s Board of Immigration Appeals. This process can often take years, contributing to a backlog of more than 3.6 million cases in federal immigration courts.

Mr Trump seeks to remove these protections. One of his executive orders directs immigration authorities to expand the use of what is known as expedited removal powers. Previously applied only to unauthorised migrants found in the US within 160km of the border and less than two weeks after arriving, this power permits the authorities to summarily deport someone without a hearing. However, existing rules establish that an individual who expresses a fear of persecution at home that is found to be credible in a screening interview has the right to seek asylum rather than face deportation.

As a general rule, those who are ultimately removed by the US government are sent to their home countries. But sometimes that nation’s government will not cooperate by supplying the necessary travel documents; Venezuela, as a rule, does not cooperate with US deportation efforts. The US authorities may also worry that an individual will be mistreated after returning home. In either case, a deportee may be sent to another country that is willing to accept him.

Though

Mexican nationals who have crossed the southern border

can be sent home by land, most other deportees are typically transported out of the US by air. The US government foots the bill. 

Mr Homan has said that Mr Trump’s deportation effort will cost as much as US$86 billion (S$116 billion), without saying what that price tag might cover. BLOOMBERG