Senate Judiciary Committee hearing looks at impacts of Trump's mass deportation plans

A hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning looked at how mass deportations promised by the incoming Trump administration would impact families, the military and the labor market.

Trump has said mass deportations of the roughly 13 million undocumented people living in the U.S. would begin on his first day in office, and he’d even use the military to carry them out.

In a hearing Tuesday morning retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, told lawmakers the military’s already engaged in over 160 countries and working to counter threats from China and Russia.

“Additional training or deployments to support deportation operations would absolutely harm operational readiness and reduce the military’s ability to counter adversaries or respond to crises in combat,” he said.

Manner said directing resources into a controversial mass deportation mission could also degrade public trust in the military and harm morale among soldiers.

Manner testified alongside DACA recipient and Assistant Philadelphia District Attorney Foday Turay and Patty Morin, the mother of a woman killed by an undocumented immigrant earlier this year.

President-elect Donald Trump has said deportations would begin with immigrants with criminal convictions. But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, told lawmakers those without records would very likely be swept up as well.

“We know this because this is what happened during the first administration, when there were no enforcement priorities, everyone was an enforcement priority. And the single largest group of increased arrests under the Trump administration was people with no criminal record,” he said.

Reichlin-Melnick said over 90% of roughly 13 million undocumented people in the U.S. have no criminal record, and 5 million U.S. citizen children have at least one parent.

“Over 4.8 million people have been here for 25 years or more, with no path to permanent legal status, no line for them to stand in, most undocumented immigrants have spent decades living, working and putting down roots at constant risk of deportation,” he said.