Since the start of fiscal year 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported over 10.8 million border encounters, according to data from the House Committee on Homeland Security. This number does not include the millions of “gotaways” who entered the country undetected.
The Biden-Harris administration’s deliberate refusal to enforce U.S. immigration laws has caused significant harm to our national security, sovereignty, and the safety of American citizens.
In response, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to launch the “largest deportation program in American history” on day one, aiming to remove at least one million illegal immigrants annually.
In a weekend op-ed published in The Kansas City Star, veteran journalist David Mastio pushed back hard against the naysayers who consider the plans “unrealistic” and say that “the effort will cost $1 trillion.”
Mastio started by noting that “too many analysts [whom he refers to as deportation deniers] have confused what they want to be true with what actually is true.” [Emphasis added.]
He dismissed their arguments as “bunk” and systematically dismantled each of their so-called “myths” using facts and historical data. Ultimately, he concluded that carrying out the deportations would be “easier than you think.”
The first is that it will cost too much. Mastio points out that, in the first two years of the Obama Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement “deported 250,000 people a year from the interior of the U.S. each year.”The budget for these 500,000 deportations was $7.5 billion over two years or $3.74 billion annually in 2024 dollars, in what is called ICE’s Detention and Removal Budget. … Since then, that budget has gone up by 20% to $4.5 billion but we’re deporting a fraction of the number of immigrants we did before.All we have to do is get back to the same efficiency we had in 2009 and 2010 to deport 300,000 (20% more than 250,000). Say the next 300,000 cost twice as much to deport — $9 billion and the next 300,000 cost twice as much again, or $18 billion. That’s 900,000 deportations a year for $31.5 billion annually. That doesn’t seem too crazy. And over a decade, that’s a third the cost critics complain of.
He argued that the mere existence of a large-scale national deportation effort will prompt at least 100,000 immigrants to “leave on their own” each year “to avoid encounters with ICE.”
“And that,” Mastio wrote, “is your million a year.”
Various government agencies and think tanks have attempted to calculate the annual cost of the border crisis to the U.S., with estimates starting at $150 billion and climbing to $451 billion. From this perspective, $31.5 billion is a relative bargain.
The second myth is that “we don’t know who to deport.” In reality, Mastio argued, the government already has enough undocumented immigrants on its radar to deport a million people annually for the next “five or six years.” This includes between “1 to 2 million” individuals who are “wanted or convicted criminals,” another 1.5 million who “are not criminals but have gone through the immigration court system and been denied legal status,” and nearly “4 million cases” currently stuck in the immigration court backlog.
The third myth is that mass deportations would violate individuals’ civil rights. Mastio contends that the groups in question have either “already received due process or are currently going through it under the system established by President Joe Biden.” As long as the Trump administration adheres to the law—and Trump has indicated that “he intends to follow the law to accomplish this”—there should be no civil rights issues during the first six years of deportations.
The final myth is that countries will refuse to accept their citizens back. During Trump’s first term, when leaders of several countries resisted the idea of readmitting some of their least desirable citizens or complying with newly established U.S. policies, Trump used financial leverage to ensure their cooperation. There’s little doubt he will use every available tool to get this done in a second term. (Mastio highlights several of these tools in his op-ed.)
I would remind those who doubt that Trump can accomplish this goal not to underestimate him. In April 2023, I wrote an op-ed titled “Maybe Trump CAN Win the General Election.” At the time, the general consensus was that while Trump might secure the GOP nomination, there was no way – with all of his baggage – he could win the general election. The post drew 927 comments – three times the usual number for an article – with most commenters saying it would never happen. Many claimed that the Democrats would rig the election.
Despite all the obstacles the Democrats put in his way, he won. And he will succeed again. He will accomplish this.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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