Deportation is the expulsion of a noncitizen from the United States for violating immigration law. A person can be deported for many reasons, including being convicted of a criminal offense, not maintaining legal status, national security, or making false claims to citizenship. People can be deported from the country they were born in, their current country of residence, or a different country where they have family or other close ties. Deportation is a significant and devastating legal sanction with profound consequences for the targeted individual, their families, and their communities. It can also have profound ripple effects across the nation and beyond.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has proposed dramatically ramping up deportation efforts, calling for 1 million deportations per year and enlisting local police departments to help detain and transport migrants. This proposal would have far-reaching impacts on the broader society, and raises concerns about the potential impact on US citizens and permanent residents and the costs to taxpayers.
A central challenge to evaluating these proposals has been the lack of reliable data on deportations. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) only provides aggregate annual counts, without detail on country of origin or the location where migrants were apprehended.
This makes it difficult to assess whether DHS is deporting more people under the Trump administration than under the Biden administration or if state and local policies may have had a significant effect on the number of people whose cases were processed. For example, during the Biden administration, ICE conducted controversial raids at worksites to deport undocumented workers. After the raids were suspended, ICE’s deportation efforts shifted away from the border and focused more on individuals with criminal histories and those deemed to be national security threats. These changes in deportation practices may have led to a decline in overall deportations in the US during the Biden administration.
Any large-scale deportation program would require extraordinary resources and logistical challenges. Even if the Trump administration were to overcome legal challenges, it would face substantial costs from a massive expansion of immigration courts and detention centers, increased flights to remove migrants, and perhaps the need for military aircraft. It could also cost billions to deport the estimated 1.2 million children who live in mixed-status households with their parents, whose removal from the United States would likely increase child poverty and harm economic and social stability. Lastly, a mass deportation programme from the interior would probably have to be accompanied by stricter border enforcement and an expanded crackdown on companies that hire undocumented workers. This would require additional resources to pay for new border walls, a naval blockade to prevent drugs like fentanyl from entering the US, and the deployment of thousands of troops to the border. All of these costs add up to a significant financial burden for the federal government and could raise taxes for US citizens and legal residents.