Former President Donald Trump has promised, if elected, to carry out a large-scale deportation operation that some military and immigration experts agree is theoretically possible but also problematic, and that could cost tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars. million a year.

In fiscal year 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents made 170,590 administrative arrests, representing a 19.5% increase from the previous year and more than any year of the Trump presidency.

If he wins a second term, Trump has promised to exponentially increase this work and suggested deporting the estimated 11 million people living in this country without legal immigration status.

His team, at various points, has suggested starting with the “criminals,” though they have provided few details about who would get priority.

A cost estimate: $88 billion – $315 billion a year

A new report from the American Immigration Council, an immigrant rights research and policy firm, estimates that deporting even one million undocumented immigrants a year would cost more than $88 billion annually, for a total of $967.9 billion dollars for more than ten years.

The report acknowledges that there are significant cost variables depending on how such an operation would be carried out and says that its estimate does not take into account the loss of tax revenue for workers or the greater economic loss if people self-deport and American companies lose labour.

A one-time effort to deport even more people on a yearly basis could cost about $315 billion, the report estimates, including about $167 billion to detain mass immigrants.

SEE ALSO: What happens to Trump’s criminal cases if he wins the election… or loses it?

The two largest costs, according to the group, would be hiring additional staff to carry out deportation raids and building and staffing mass detention centers. “There would be no way to accomplish this mission without mass detention as an intermediate step,” the report reads.

Trump campaign officials agree that one of the biggest logistical hurdles in any mass deportation effort would be building and staffing new detention centers as a stopgap solution.

Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser, has repeatedly said that if Trump wins the White House, his team plans to build facilities to house 50,000 to 70,000 people. By comparison, the total US prison population in 2022, which comprises all people held in local, county, state and federal prisons and jails, is currently 1.9 million people.

The American Immigration Council report estimates that deporting one million immigrants a year would require the United States to “build and maintain 24 times more ICE detention capacity than currently exists.”

There are currently an estimated 1.1 million undocumented immigrants in the country who have received “final orders of removal.” Those people could, in theory, be removed immediately by ICE agents, but due to limited resources, ICE agents have recently focused on those who have recently arrived or who have committed dangerous crimes.

“I think it’s possible they could execute this. Human resources would be the hardest for them to overcome. They would have to get ICE agents off the border if they want to go into the cities,” Katie Tobin, an academic at the told ABC. News the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who served as President Joe Biden’s top immigration advisor on the National Security Council.

Currently, ICE agents assist Customs and Border Patrol agents at the border, conducting expedited deportations of newcomers who have recently crossed into the country illegally and providing logistical support to the Department of Homeland Security.

A new mandate to arrest and deport people who have been living in the country for some time could mark a significant change for the law enforcement agency.

The American Immigration Council report estimates that to carry out even one million deportations a year, ICE would need to hire about 30,000 new agents, “which would instantly make it the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government,” it reads. the report.

Trump campaign: deportation costs less than immigrants

The Trump campaign has argued that the cost of deportation “pales in comparison” to other costs associated with housing and providing social services to recent immigrants. “Kamala’s border invasion is unsustainable and is already tearing at the fabric of our society. Mass deportations of criminal illegal immigrants and the restoration of an orderly immigration system are the only way to resolve this crisis,” Karoline Leavitt, press secretary national campaign of Trump. he told ABC News in a statement.

Trump has promised to mobilize and federalize National Guard units to help with the deportation effort, which would likely be a first for the military.

Under U.S. law, military units are prohibited from participating in domestic law enforcement, although Trump has proposed invoking the Insurrection Act, a sweeping law that could give him broader powers to direct National Guard units as he sees fit. it seems.

“We don’t like the uniform military in our internal affairs at all,” William Banks, a Syracuse University professor and founding director of the Institute for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, told ABC News in a telephone interview. “The default is that it’s always done by civilians. Police, state police, city police, sheriffs,” he continued.

Using the military to enforce the law in the country would be a fundamental change that Banks said very few Americans have considered or faced.

“It would turn the whole society upside down… all these arguments about him being an autocrat or a dictator, they are not exaggerated,” he said. For example, uniformed military officers are not trained in law enforcement and if they were asked to make arrests of civilians, there could be significant conflicts and violations of civil liberties.

To target and deport immigrants who have not received “final orders of removal” but whose cases are still pending, Trump has discussed using another rare legal maneuver to gain broad authority to target and detain immigrants without a hearing, specifically invoking the Immigration Law. Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law last used during World War II to detain Japanese Americans.

Trump would also need other nations to accept deportees and allow deportation flights to land on their territory.

Katie Tobin, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served as President Joe Biden’s top immigration adviser on the National Security Council, told ABC News: “Last time the Trump administration did not hesitate to threaten punitive action against countries that did not do so. cooperate with them on immigration, but there are some practical issues in terms of how many flights per week a country like Guatemala or Colombia can accept.

There would also likely be less tangible and more indirect costs of a mass deportation effort. Inevitably, there would be domino effects throughout the economy. In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes, according to the report, and “undocumented immigrants also contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare.” .

The human cost

Experts also predict that if a future Trump administration were to carry out any large, highly visible initial deportation operation, a significant number of individuals and families would likely choose to self-deport to avoid family separations or having to spend time in a detention-style detention center. military.

The authors of the American Immigration Council report argue that the effect of a mass deportation program, as described by Trump and his advisers, “would almost certainly threaten the well-being” even of those immigrants with legal status in the United States and “even, potentially, naturalized U.S. citizens and their communities.”

“They would live under the shadow of armed police measures as the United States persecuted its neighbors and, as social scientists discovered during the Trump administration, would be prone to worry that they and their children could be next,” the report says.

In recent interviews and conversations with reporters, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has sidestepped the question of whether a future Trump administration would separate families during a new deportation effort or in detention centers. along the border.

“If a man commits gun violence and is taken to prison, that’s family separation, which of course is tragic for children, but criminals have to be prosecuted and the law has to be enforced,” Vance told reporters. journalists in September when visiting the border.