President-elect Trump’s plans to crack down on immigration includes using a range of tools to deport millions of people in the U.S. each year — from obscure laws to military funds to law enforcement officers from all levels of government.
History tells us such an effort would dramatically disrupt local communities and economies across the U.S. — and so fear among the millions of people without legal status.
Trump wants to mobilize ICE agents — along with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, federal prosecutors, the National Guard, and even state and local law enforcement officers — to carry out deportations of undocumented immigrants, a source familiar with the plan told the press.
Trump has long campaigned on anti-immigrant fears. “They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” he said at a rally last month, a line he repeats often.
Fast-track deportations — now reserved for recent crossers encountered near the border — would be expanded to apply to anyone who illegally crossed the border and couldn’t prove they’d been living in the U.S. for more than two years.
Trump would curtail the usual multistep deportation process by using an obscure section of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts to immediately round up and deport some migrants with criminal histories.
The military would build massive sites near the border to hold people awaiting deportation.
It could evoke scenes from the 1950s, when more than 1 million undocumented Mexican immigrants were deported under President Eisenhower.
It was the largest deportation operation in the U.S. history. The vast majority of Americans alive today have never seen anything like it.
The operation used military-style tactics to round up and house up to 1.3 million people from Mexico — and even some Mexican Americans who were U.S. citizens — according to federal immigration records. Scholars say there could have been many more.
The dollar cost of Trump’s plan is unclear, and there’s plenty of skepticism whether he could pull it off.
Trump has made similar promises in the past, but deportation levels during his presidency never reached what they were under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
The human costs of Trump’s plan — to families, the economies of local communities, employers and more — could ripple across the nation, analysts say.
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