President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday and has promised to begin the largest deportation operation in American history on Day 1, but it’s not clear what that will look like.
At campaign rallies, Trump repeatedly said the United States is being "invaded" and "occupied" by criminals and rattled off descriptions of crimes he claimed were committed by undocumented immigrants.
Mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants were pitched as a solution.
Days after he won the election, Trump named Tom Homan as his new “border czar." It’s an unofficial title Trump said would oversee deportations. But Homan has offered few details about his plan.
Migration Policy Institute’s immigration program leader Doris Meissner is also a former United Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner. She said the fear and uncertainty generated by these plans is a policy outcome in and of itself.
“Certainly the administration and the people that are thinking about this more deeply within the incoming administration are counting on the fact that there will be higher degrees of self-deportation. And all of that instability and uncertainty may very well be the most important change that will take place,” Meissner said.

The biggest hurdle to realizing Trump’s plan is logistics. It would take an enormous investment in time, money and personnel to make it happen.
The American Immigration Council estimates that deporting the roughly 13 million immigrants in the United States who are undocumented or here with only temporary protection would cost around $88 billion a year and take more than a decade — which is far more than the Department of Homeland Security’s annual budget.
Meissner said the government has never been fully funded to secure the border, much less carry out a deportation mission on this scale. One thing she said is certain is that the government will need to create detention facilities.
“It will take some time to put those resources into place. So, you know, all of this is not going to just spring out-of-the-box on day one,” she said.
According to data from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics, Arizona has the 10th highest share of undocumented immigrants, with an estimated 290,000 in the state as of 2022.
Trump and Homan say they’ll prioritize going after immigrants with criminal histories but will eventually go after everyone who is here illegally.
It’s also not clear what criminal histories means in this context, since crossing the border between ports of entry is a crime by itself, and the United States already has an expedited removal process for undocumented immigrants who are convicted of serious crimes.

But, study after study has shown undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than their U.S.-born counterparts.
Last year, an analysis by the American Immigration Council of more than 40 years worth of national crime statistics found no correlation between the number of immigrants in an area and the amount of violent or property crime there. In fact, the crime rate actually went down in some places as immigration rates went up.
Still, that idea — tying criminality to migration and border security — has persisted. And even spread across party lines.
Andrea Flores is the vice president of immigration policy and campaigns at the advocacy group FWD.us. She also served in border security and migration roles during the Obama administration.
“Democrats just came off an election where, due to President Biden’s lack of leadership on the issue, Democrats really need to show leadership on the issue of border security,” Flores said. “There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors right now about what is border security-related, and what is not.”
She said a good example of that is the Laken Riley Act — a bill currently being considered in Washington, D.C., that’s named after a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed last year by a Venezuelan immigrant officials determined had crossed into the U.S. illegally.
The legislation would require Homeland Security to detain any immigrant even arrested for low-level crimes like shoplifting and its current version makes no carve-outs for minors or other immigrant groups like DACA recipients. It would also make it easier for states to successfully challenge federal immigration policy.
It passed the U.S. House with bipartisan support and is backed by Democrats like Gov. Katie Hobbs and Sen. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego. Gallego even co-sponsored the Senate version being debated this week and framed it as an antidote to what he called the border crisis.

“But, when you read the bill, it has absolutely nothing to do with our border, why people migrate to our border, security and personnel at our border,” Flores said.
Critics warn the Laken Riley Act could eliminate due process for immigrants and could be used to target longtime U.S. residents — like DACA recipients and recipients of Temporary Protected Status — for detention and deportation. There’s no mention of how those detentions would actually be funded — or if the cost could fall to local jurisdictions.
Flores says unlike Biden and other past administrations — which have ramped up deportations at the border — Trump’s plans could be broader.
“And to reach into longer-time immigrant communities who have now gone through three administrations where there was some hope of a temporary protection, some hope for a path to citizenship,” Flores said.
Deportation is not something the United States can do unilaterally. It’s a two-way street which requires the cooperation of other countries — and not all countries are willing to accept the return of their citizens.
Jean Reisz is an immigration attorney and the co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic. She notes that immigrants who face deportation are entitled to due process, which includes court hearings.
“There is an over 2 million case backlog in immigration court right now, so the average length of a court case is three years I believe,” Reisz said.
There could be some difference in the way that cooperative states and uncooperative states see Trump’s deportation plans play out.
Trump has suggested that he will offer monetary rewards to states who work with him, and Homan said in an interview with “Face the Nation” that if sanctuary cities won’t cooperate with him and let federal officers into jails to arrest immigrants, then he’ll send agents directly into those communities and apprehend even more people.
“The president can't force local law enforcement and local states to help with enforcing immigration law, but they can accept cooperation and even incentivize it through funding,” Reisz said.

But, Arizona lawmakers have also pushed their own immigration reform measures.
Last November, voters approved Proposition 314 by a wide margin. It paves the way to allow local and state law enforcement to make immigration-related arrests, if a similar law in Texas is allowed to go into effect.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) said that Prop. 314 is something the party put forward because they believe that President Joe Biden was refusing to secure the border.
“Now that President Trump has been elected, I know that one of the very first things that he’s going to do is he’s going to reinstate all of his executive orders that Biden undid and he’s going to enforce the law,” Petersen said. “Now that the federal government is going to enforce border laws that really take the pressure off of Arizona having to enforce this state law.”
This year, state lawmakers announced that their main border plans are to support federal efforts and ensure compliance with Trump’s laws.
“If the governor or other elected leaders choose to stand in the way, get ready for court. The Republican-led Arizona Legislature views to uphold the rule of law,” Arizona Senate Pro Tempore T.J. Shope (R-Coolidge) said of the border in a video statement after Petersen pledged to support Trump’s border plans.

One thing immigration experts expect is workplace raids on places where undocumented immigrants are expected to be, like large construction sites. In Trump’s first term, 700 people were arrested in raids on chicken processing plants in Mississippi.
Homan has said publicly that workforce raids will be necessary.
“I think it's going to be a bigger show. If you're talking about mass deportation, it's going to take too much time and money to go to everyone's house, so you're going to go to big manufacturing plants, places where people are suspected of being undocumented,” Reisz said.
In addition to promising the largest deportation operation in American history; Trump has also pledged to end birthright citizenship and use the National Guard to assist with deportations.
But Trump's statements and promises have fluctuated on border and immigration issues like the Obama-era DACA program. Trump tried to end the program in his first term, but told NBC a few weeks ago that he wants “Dreamers” to be able to stay in the U.S.
On a recent morning at the office of a pro-bono legal aid group called Keep Tucson Together, office administrator Xochitl Mercado was busy answering phone calls and sifting through documents.
The group’s been around for more than a decade helping local families with everything from DACA applications to deportation proceedings.

Mercado said they’re trying to prepare people as best they can for a new Trump presidency — briefing families on their rights in the U.S. and supplying big yellow signs to post in windows to keep law enforcement from entering without a warrant. Still, she says, there’s a lot of fear that families will be broken up.
“[Fear among] U.S. citizen children whose parents are undocumented, or for example, that one day, even those with legal residency won’t be safe in this country,” she said in Spanish. She knows that feeling well. She’s from Sonora originally and she’s been here for more than 30 years. Her three kids are U.S. citizens and some are military service members.
“We have contributed a lot to this country as immigrants, we love this country, our children are from this country,” she said. “And even so, I am afraid.”
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