Two former officials who handled immigration issues for then-President Donald Trump say that a “whole of government” approach costing billions would be needed to mount the “largest deportation effort in American history” promised in the Republican convention platform if Trump is re-elected.
The exact number of people who would be deported in a second Trump administration is hard to pin down.
During the June 29 presidential debate, Trump claimed there were 18 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. One of the two former Trump officials said it could be as high as 30 million.
The most recent government estimate is that just under 11 million unauthorized immigrants resided in the U.S. as of Jan. 1, 2022, up 500,000 from two years earlier but down from the 2010 total of 11.6 million.
It’s unclear how many more noncitizens have entered the U.S., or have changed their legal status or left voluntarily since that estimate.
Last week, according to Semafor, a former acting ICE director under Trump who is seen as a possible Department of Homeland Security chief in a second Trump administration told a conservative conference, “They ain’t seen s— yet. Wait until 2025.”
“Trump comes back in January,” Tom Homan said, “I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.”
In a statement, Trump campaign Trump National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “A majority of Americans want mass deportations for illegal immigrants … On Day One back in the White House, President Trump will begin the largest criminal deportation operation of illegal immigrants and restore the rule of law.”
Fear politics: Mass deportations and loss of US citizenship, Trump’s immigration plan
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