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Notes -
Trump Says He Wants to Deport Millions. He’ll Have a Hard Time Removing More People Than Biden Has (archive here)
Thought this might contribute in an interesting way to the current talk about deportation, expulsion, and the election. So we all know Trump is talking a big game right now about mass deportation. Interestingly, the article mentions that at least in theory, 42% of Democrats also support mass deportation (and slightly over half of Americans overall). Of course, like the wall, it's of some question whether and how much it would happen, and of course we haven't talked at all about who would pay for it this time. Not only are there legal hurdles a president can't fix alone or even sometimes with legislation, at least not easily, but there's also diplomatic considerations -- a lot of countries literally refuse to take people back, planes are expensive, and there's a pilot shortage anyways. The closing quote considers mass deportations more of a general rallying cry on the seriousness level of "defund the police".
Basically the article points out that under existing deportations, there appears to be a cap based on ICE's funding and priorities and infrastructure of at most 30,000 deportations in a month, and this seems to be a roughly hard cap across administrations. Please take a look at this chart or it might lack context. The article talks about how under Title 42's implementation, which was started by Trump in March 2020 and kept in place by Biden when he took office in 2021 and continues through today, you were allowed to more effectively expel migrants (note the phrasing - this is not deportation!) and at high rates, usually at or near the border (unlike deportation, which is usually the culmination of a longer process and involves courts usually).
Largely due to this, the Biden administration actually expelled millions more migrants than Trump did!
That's quite a quote. Two years of Biden was more than four years of Trump? Yes. Of course the Biden (and now Harris) campaign probably didn't want to talk about this so explicitly, but there you have it. ICE was surged to the border and prioritized that over internal searches, so that was part of it, and remember that currently, actual deportation is kind of at its limit, in addition to costing thousands of dollars per case, which likely wouldn't change substantially even under the most rosy of Trump deportation plans (though it's possible the time per case might drop with more resources the time to train and prepare the bureaucracy and infrastructure would be significant). The article notes that claims of using the National Guard to do deportations isn't very realistic -- it would take a decent amount of time and training to get them set up to do so, and so using their manpower is far from a panacea.
Anyways, definitely look at the chart. Is this good evidence that threats of mass deportations are indeed political theater more than an actual proposal? Or should anti-immigration voters actually consider a vote for Harris?
I am reminded of arguments against the death penalty that turn on how incredibly expensive it is to put someone to death (when one factors all the delays, legal proceedings, hearings and so forth). It is strange because these activists whether they are anti-death penalty or anti-deportation act like these costs are some essential part of the process when they’re obviously not. Executing someone could be done for pennies if we cleared the obstacles and proceeded as efficiently as possible and the same is nearly true of deportation (nearly, obviously deportation is somewhat more expensive inherently).
These things are always just issues of willpower as @IGI-111 said below. Clear the legal hurdles, brush aside defiant activists and NGOs and you’ll find our the process is not nearly so expensive and our capacity would be near limitless
The justification for the high costs will be similarly analogous. For the death penalty, you want to execute as few innocent people as possible. In principle, no innocent people would ever be executed. In real world practice, a legal death penalties always puts innocent people do death in rare circumstances (governments are incompetent, Juries composed of Everymen, etc).
Likewise, the real world of deportations are far more complex than a simply wishing that the correct people are deported in the correct way. Laws are frequently squishy. A few million cases a year are clear, and people are quickly deported (roughly 10k per day). The others have to be argued. Removing barriers before understanding why they are there is an understandable impulse, but a dubious policy.
Granted, in both circumstances activists are incentivized to run up costs. That seems like more a feature than a bug. The US government is set up to protect people from the government.
I don't think that you have a right not to be deported. Being in the US for non citizens is at the absolute discretion of the USG.
Absolutely. Assuming you are not a citizen, you can be deported. Not germane to the point I'm trying to make.
I'm responding to OP's claim that its "obvious" deportations can be done much more rapidly and cheaply, making an analogy to the death penalty.
Im pointing to the system we have, the tradeoffs made, the reasons behind them, and the traditions created. I'm arguing that the costs are inherently high because of our Constitution, laws, and history. The USG is free to pursue mass deportations, but rarely has, and I find that telling. Oddly enough, the last few administrations to campaign on it don't do it, and those that campaign against it end up deporting even more people. Strange
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/#:~:text=The%20unauthorized%20immigrant%20population%20in,the%20most%20recent%20year%20available.
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