In the final month of the presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump is doubling down on his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation in American history.
In Reading, Pennsylvania, last week, Trump received a standing ovation from a crowd after he said he would “get these people out” and “get them out very quickly.” In Aurora, Colorado, Trump told marchers on Friday that he would “save Aurora and every city that has been invaded and occupied.”
Immigration scholars, lawyers, and economists have pointed to enormous constitutional, humanitarian, and economic problems posed by Trump’s repeated pledge. But in addition to the expected damage to immigrant families, communities and local economies, the detention and deportation of some 11 million people is nearly impossible to finance, according to an analysis of U.S. budget and immigration court data conducted by CBS News.
The analysis finds that even if Congress agreed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, it would take much longer than four years to deport every illegal immigrant living in the United States.
A CBS News analysis of immigration system data found:
Arresting and deporting just 1 million people could cost taxpayers about $20 billion. Deporting 11 million people over four years would cost more than 20 times what the nation has spent annually over the past five years on deporting people living in the United States. New funding must be approved by a majority of both chambers of Congress. Assuming Trump gets funding and can quickly ramp up staffing in immigration enforcement and the courts, the backlog will grow — not decrease — by millions based on what happened in the last two administrations. The Trump administration itself, despite promising to deport millions in 2016, deported 325,660 people during his fiscal years in office. The cost of deportation to taxpayers
Over the past five fiscal years, it has cost an average of $19,599 to deport a single person, according to a CBS News analysis of federal data. This number is based on budget allocations for each step of the deportation process: apprehension of an illegal immigrant living in the United States, detention, the immigration court process, and transportation out of the country.
From 2021 to 2023, as migrant crossings at the southern border reached record levels, ICE deployed nearly one-sixth of its workforce normally allocated to deportations to the border to assist Customs and Border Patrol. (Crossings have declined since then.)
ICE has also diverted resources to removals under Title 42, an emergency health authority enacted during the pandemic that allowed the Border Patrol to remove migrants trying to cross the border. Fewer people were deported from within the United States during those years than in previous years, resulting in a higher cost of deportation.
But even when Trump was president and the number of border crossings was lower than during the post-pandemic period, the cost of deporting one person was still $14,614. Deporting all of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the United States at the time would have cost between $40 billion and $54 billion annually over the next presidential term — up to $216 billion in total. . Just $9 billion was allocated to ICE last year.
Even the lower end of this annual estimate, $40 billion, is enough to provide each of 20 million families with a child tax credit each year, more than double FEMA’s entire budget. Over four years, the amount — $160 to $216 billion — is equivalent to the cost of building about half a million new homes across the country.
A similar analysis by the American Immigration Council put the total cost of deporting 11 million people at a higher value of $315 billion.
“It can’t be close to 11 million.”
Trump said local law enforcement would help with the mass deportation because “they know their names, they know their serial numbers.” Experts say it’s not that simple.
“One of the assumptions in Trump’s proposal is that local police and local sheriffs will cooperate,” said Abigail Andrews, director of the Center for Comparative Migration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. “We know from the past two decades that one of the main ways for cities and states to oppose immigration operations has been police cooperation or lack thereof with ICE.”
Trump said he would deploy the National Guard to identify and detain immigrants who entered illegally. This plan may face legal obstacles, because the law prohibits the use of federal forces for civilian law enforcement unless authorized by Congress. Trump responded by saying that illegal immigrants “are not civilians.”
Law enforcement agents can also end up racially profiling citizens and non-citizens alike in an attempt to identify illegal immigrants living in the United States.
“There is no way to do this without significant civil liberties violations,” said Donald Kerwin, editor and founder of the journal Migration and Human Security. “Ultimately, the number can’t be close to 11 million.”
Trump promised mass deportations when he ran for president in 2016, but during the fiscal years of his term, ICE deported just 325,660 people from within the United States.
The mass deportation, depending on its scope, will likely not be completed within four years either. U.S. immigration courts currently face a backlog of 3.7 million cases, according to records obtained by Syracuse University. It would take the immigration court system another eight years and 700 additional judges — nearly doubling its current workforce — to completely eliminate the current backlog, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.
Those who receive a Notice to Appear in Immigration Court may be scheduled for a court date years in the future.
Using a tool developed by Kerwin and his son, independent researcher Brendan Kerwin, CBS News estimated that the immigration backlog would reach 13.5 million by fiscal year 2028 if courts received 11 million new cases.
The tool takes into account the rate at which immigration judges process cases, the number of new cases each year, and the number of judges appointed. The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, plans to appoint 150 new judges in fiscal year 2024. If the government appoints 150 new judges each year for the next four years, sending 11 million illegal immigrants notices to appear would leave the courts with 13.5 million Issue backlog by fiscal year 2028.
Trump could take steps to eliminate this legal process for some immigrants, which could result in a smaller backlog. Under a 1996 law, those caught within 100 miles of the border within two weeks of their illegal crossing can be deported without a court hearing. The Trump administration previously expanded this law to apply to the entire country and any illegal immigrants who entered illegally and had been living in the United States for less than two years.
Mass deportations would reduce employment opportunities
In addition to the costs described above, deporting millions of immigrants could also negatively impact the U.S. economy and labor market.
One study found that Obama’s Secure Communities program, which deported nearly half a million undocumented immigrants, not only pulled those immigrants out of the labor force, but had the ripple effect of lowering employment and hourly wages for U.S.-born people as well. Expanding on their findings, the researchers estimated that for every million unauthorized workers deported, 88,000 Indigenous jobs would be lost.
An analysis by the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics, released last month, reached similar conclusions. The researchers found that a mass deportation of even about 1.3 million illegal immigrants would reduce GDP and employment in the United States by 0.8% by 2028. A larger mass deportation of more than 8 million immigrants would have an even greater impact, reducing Employment to 5.1% below the normal rate. Current baseline.
Undocumented immigrants also paid $59.4 billion in federal taxes and $37.3 billion in state and local taxes, according to a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. More than a third of those went to Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment insurance.
More than 4 million families could be separated
Mass deportation will not only reduce employment opportunities for citizens, but will also affect family members of citizens. There are approximately 4.1 million mixed-status families living in the United States, according to Pew Research Center data. About 4.4 million children born in the United States live with an undocumented parent.
Children whose parents are deported “often drop out of school, and end up experiencing trauma, mental health challenges and behavioral problems,” said Andrews, the researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Often, couples have to deal not only with the enormous emotional cost of their partner’s deportation, but also with the economic cost of having to move or having to take another job.”
Immigrants facing deportation “ultimately end up very disoriented and in an existential dilemma,” Andrews said.
“The economic cost will be very high, but the social, emotional and societal costs will also be extraordinarily high,” she added.
More about Julia Ingram