Immigration

Fiona Harrigan | 5.24.2024 5:15 PM

Former President Donald Trump has promised to enact a wide range of restrictionist immigration policies if he wins the presidential race this year, but his most extreme proposal is to carry out "the largest domestic deportation operation in American history." In an interview last month with Time, Trump suggested that between 15 million and 20 million people could be targeted by the plan.

The idea of mass deportations had buy-in from other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And 51 percent of people surveyed by Axios and The Harris Poll in April said they support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

The proposal has entered the mainstream, though few who embrace it as an antidote to a chaotic border policy seem to realize what implementation would cost. It would require militaristic enforcement that would bleed into many parts of everyday life; it would tear long-present parents and providers away from their U.S. citizen children; it would rattle key economic sectors; it would carry an extraordinary price tag; and it would fly in the face of American ideals.

In other words, Trump's mass deportation plan isn't just anti-immigrant. It's anti-American.

An April report from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics put the number of unauthorized immigrants around 11 million as of January 2022. (The count........

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