Immigration: Trump’s plans

By Richard North - November 10, 2024

Whatever one’s views of Donald Trump, it is highly encouraging to see that he is already powering ahead to make mass deportation a reality – a sharp contrast to the wimpish ineffectuality of the Starmer administration.

And, from all accounts, the programme cannot come too soon. About eight million migrants have entered the US illegally since Biden came to power in 2020. Voters across the ideological spectrum say that securing the border is among their most pressing priorities.

During the summer, soon to be former president Biden issued an executive order that banned migrants crossing the border from seeking asylum, which had a significant effect on the flow of migrants. But stopping them is no longer enough. Too much damage has already been done.

Now, the Sunday papers are providing us with early details, with the Sunday Telegraph telling us that the president elect plans, on his first day of office, to declare a state of emergency and mobilise the military to execute his deportation programme. This would include the use of military bases to detain migrants and military aircraft to remove them from the country.

The Sunday Times offers a far more detailed piece, headed: “‘Start with the worst’: Trump’s mass deportation blueprint revealed”. This does what it says on the tin and effectively provides a one-stop-shop for an outline of Trump’s policy.

A name has already emerged of the man who will lead the programme, Tom Homan, former head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term. He is quoted widely by the ST and is saying that the US Army would be used to round up and deport undocumented migrants in “targeted operations” from day one of the Trump presidency.

The aim is to deport every person who is in the US illegally — which Homan estimates to be about 20 million people. “Bottom line: if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table”, he says. “You’ve got to prioritise where you go first, but again, it’s a crime to enter this country illegally”.

The physical removal of illegal immigrants would coincide with a complete shut-down of the southern border, the completion of the wall and a restart of Trump’s previous “remain in Mexico” programme, under which potential migrants were required to wait across the border to have their asylum applications processed.

Homan is unapologetic about the impact. “People say, well, it sounds awful cruel, you want to remove millions”, he acknowledges, but then reminds us that there is an “historic illegal immigration crisis” with numbers never been seen before, most of whom will not qualify for asylum”.

As to priorities, Himan says, “We’re going to concentrate on the worst of the worst,” he said, describing the start of operations. “It’s going to be a lot different to what the liberal media is saying it’s going to be”.

Stephen Miller, a senior adviser and a leading architect of the deportation scheme, is conscious that some Democrat states might refuse to cooperate with the programme but he aims to use National Guard units from Republican states to carry out the measures,.

Homan stresses that the military role is not new. He is simply seeking to expand it. “The military has helped on the border for the last six presidents, so it’s nothing new that the DoD [Department of Defence] will assist”, he says.

Nevertheless, their role will be limited. “I don’t see them making arrests, they don’t have immigration authority, but they can certainly do transportation”, Homan says, adding: “They can certainly do infrastructure-building, they can certainly help build these facilities and help finish the wall with the Army Corps of Engineers”.

If the scale of this programme is unprecedented, so it seems will be the economic impact. It could increase food prices and stress the US farming industry, which relies heavily on undocumented labour. The overall cost of the programme is also expected to be high, with the pro-migrant campaign group, the American Immigration Council, estimating at least $315 billion.

The Council points to the practical difficulties, noting that the US has never deported more than half a million immigrants a year. Many of those may have been migrants caught trying to cross the border, rather than those living in the country.

A robust Homan is having none of it. “What I’m hearing a lot about is that it’s going to be a massive cost to do this operation, billions of dollars every year”, he says, claiming that, overall, the programme will deliver a cost saving for the American people.

“We’re spending billions and billions of dollars on the care of illegal aliens, between medical care, hospital care, schooling, all the money we’re spending on these hotels”, he says.

There is an additional benefit in the closure of the border. It would, says Homan, hit the people-smuggling gangs, which are run by the Mexican cartels, depriving them of their income. President-elect Trump, we are told, is “committed to taking these cartels on personally” and plans to designate them as terrorist organisations.

However, it is not just the Mexican border and illegal immigrants in focus. More than 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been allowed to enter the country lawfully under Biden, and many will be at risk of losing their legal status if Trump revokes their protections.

There remains, of course, the vexed issue to the receiving states. Should these refuse to take back the deportees, as Venezuela has done in the past, Homan says, Trump would force their hand.

He is, we are told, “going to demand that these countries do something or face consequences”. Trump could – as he did in his first term – threaten governments with tariffs and with the removal of international aid payments in order to force them to comply with US policies.

“When you have a strong president who makes them do what they should do and what they’re supposed to do, that’s going to come a long way”, Homan says. “The ideal success is: crime rate goes down, illegal immigration goes down, lives are saved – the ideal outcome”.

The big question will then be whether the policy works. The Washington Post has already been there, citing Chad Wolf, who was acting homeland security secretary at the end of Trump’s first term and who has been mentioned as a possible return candidate.

He thinks Trump will have more latitude to make sweeping changes to immigration policy because voters have repudiated the “chaos” at the border under Biden. “The environment we’re operating in is very different than it was in 2017 and 2018”, Wolf says. “I think the American people as a whole are much more open to his policies because they’ve seen what’s happened over last four years. The president has a mandate for border security”.

Wolf said he expects Trump to streamline deportations from the interior of the United States, where about 11 million undocumented immigrants reside. He says the new administration could curb appeals and quickly rescind Biden policies that limit deportations mostly to serious criminals and recent border-crossers. “You’ll see a different mindset, and over time it’ll be possible to remove large numbers of people”, Wolf adds.

The issue is addressed in different terms by the New York Times, which indicates that the mere threat of deportation is already deterring migrants from making the trek across the border.

In Mexico, however, humanitarian groups and migration officials are preparing for a possible rush before Trump’s inauguration in January. “The vast majority of those in Mexico are going to try to get to the border”, says Irineo Mujica, the Mexico director of People Without Borders, a transnational advocacy group. “The door definitely closes now, and a lot of them are going to try to make a run for it”.

And yet, the situation is complex. Even without Trump’s election, some potential migrants have been having second thoughts, stemming from a growing understanding about the risks of the route, and the difficulties created by the Mexican authorities.

Crossings are down 78 percent since the peak in 2023, the result of tougher enforcement targeting migrants traveling through Mexico and emergency measures imposed this year that deny migrants access to the US asylum system.

And some would-be migrants are saying they were considering staying put for a different reason: A number of Venezuelans said they viewed Trump’s election as potentially positive for their country, removing the economic driver for migration.

Either way, it looks as if we’re about to embark on a unique experiment of staggering proportions and, if it is going to succeed, the United States is probably the only country that could deal with the scale. As the programme takes shape, the eyes of the world will be watching, no more so than those in the UK and Europe.

I cannot imagine a situation where, if the programme is successful, that it won’t have repercussions on policy this side of the Atlantic.