The centerpiece of Donald Trump’s second-term domestic agenda is the mass deportation of what he and his campaign say are 20 million or even 25 million undocumented immigrants.
“The Republican platform,” Trump said during his speech accepting his party’s nomination in July for president, “promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” And while the best estimates have the undocumented population at around 11 million people, plus the approximately 2.3 million migrants who have been released into the country on bond, parole, an order of supervision or conditional release, this doesn’t seem to matter to the former president, who has targeted anyone he deems “illegal.”
For Trump, mass deportation is the solution to most of the nation’s most pressing challenges. Mass deportation, he says, would end a supposed epidemic of crime and disorder. It would save the culture and secure the nation. And his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, says that mass deportation would, somehow, lower prices and alleviate the housing crisis. “We have a lot of Americans that need homes,” Vance said during his debate Tuesday night with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. “We should be kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes, and we should be building more homes for the American citizens who deserve to be here.”
If Trump is a classic American confidence man, then mass deportation is his miracle tonic — a magical tincture that treats all ailments and cures all maladies. And like any traveling salesman, Trump is careful not to mention the side effects of this potent treatment. But not only are there side effects; the potion doesn’t treat the disease and may kill the patient.
It is obvious that mass deportation would be a humanitarian disaster — if past precedent is any indication of future results, the forced migration and detention of millions of people is very likely to kill thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of those caught in the dragnet of involuntary removal. If put into place, the plan would destroy communities and tear families apart. And given Trump’s hostility to birthright citizenship, there is every reason to think that his deportation regime would fall on American citizens as well, especially those with ties to the undocumented.
A little less obvious is the extent to which mass deportation would plunge the United States into economic darkness. According to a new report from the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, a mass deportation plan designed to expel 13.3 million undocumented immigrants over about 10 years would crash the economy, immiserate millions of Americans and siphon nearly $1 trillion from the federal government.