Former President Donald Trump has pledged, if elected, to carry out a large-scale deportation operation that some immigration and military experts say is theoretically possible but also problematic, and which could costing tens, if not hundreds, of billions per year.

During fiscal year 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers 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 increase this work exponentially and has suggested deporting all 11 million people living in this country without legal immigration status.

His team, on several occasions, suggested starting with “criminals,” although it provided few details on which ones would be prioritized.

A cost estimate: $88 billion to $315 billion per year

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

The report acknowledges that there are significant cost variables depending on how such an operation would be conducted and says its estimate does not take into account workers’ lost tax revenue or the larger economic loss if people were self-expelling and American companies were losing workers.

A one-time effort to deport even more people in one year per year could cost about $315 billion, the report estimates, including about $167 billion to mass detain immigrants.

The two biggest costs, the group said, would be hiring additional staff to conduct deportation operations 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 said.

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

Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, has repeatedly said that if Trump wins the White House, his team plans to build facilities that can accommodate between 50,000 and 70,000 people. For comparison, the entire 2022 U.S. prison and jail population, including every person held in local, county, state, and federal jails and prisons, currently stands at 1.9 million people.

The American Immigration Council report estimates that to deport one million immigrants per year, the United States would need to “build and maintain ICE detention capacity 24 times greater than that currently exists.”

There are currently approximately 1.1 million undocumented immigrants in the country who have received “final orders of deportation.” These individuals, in theory, could be deported immediately by ICE agents, but due to limited resources, ICE agents have recently focused on people who have recently arrived or who have committed dangerous crimes.

“I think it’s possible they could pull this off. Human resources would be the hardest thing for them to get a handle on. They would have to remove ICE agents from the border if they want to go into the cities ” Katie Tobin, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served as President Joe Biden’s top migration adviser on the National Security Council, told ABC News.

ICE agents are currently assisting Customs and Border Patrol agents at the border, conducting expedited expulsions of new arrivals who have recently crossed the country illegally and providing logistical support to the Department of Homeland Security.

A new mandate to round up and deport individuals who have lived in the country for a period of time could mark a significant shift for law enforcement.

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 immigration agency.” federal law enforcement,” the report said.

Trump campaign: deportation costs less than the cost of migrants

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 migrants. “Kamala’s border invasion is unsustainable and is already tearing at the fabric of our society. Mass expulsions of illegal immigrants and the restoration of an orderly immigration system are the only way to resolve this crisis,” Karoline said Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign. , told ABC News in a statement.

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

Under US law, military units are barred from participating in domestic law enforcement, although Trump has proposed invoking the sweeping Insurrection Act, which could give him greater powers. extended to direct National Guard units as he sees fit.

“We don’t like the one-size-fits-all military in our domestic affairs,” William Banks, a Syracuse University professor and founding director of the Institute on National Security and Counterterrorism, told ABC News in a telephone interview. “The default is always to let civilians do it. The cops, the state police, the municipal police, the sheriffs,” he continued.

Using the military to enforce the law domestically would be a fundamental change, one that Banks believes too few Americans have considered or grappled with.

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

In order to target and deport immigrants who have not received “final orders of deportation” but whose cases are still pending, Trump considered using another rare legal maneuver to grant himself broad power to target and detain immigrants without an audience, specifically invoking the Alien. Enemies Act of 1798, a war law last used during World War II to detain Japanese Americans.

Trump would also need other countries to accept deportees and allow deportation flights to return to their soil.

Katie Tobin, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and President Joe Biden’s top migration adviser on the National Security Council, told ABC News: “Last time, the Trump administration did not hesitate to threaten punitive measures against countries which had not done so. cooperate with them on immigration matters, but there are practical problems in terms of the number of flights a country like Guatemala or Colombia can accept per week. »

It is likely that a mass eviction effort would also entail less tangible and more indirect costs. There would inevitably be repercussions throughout the economy. According to the report, in 2022 alone, undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes, and “undocumented immigrants have also contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare.”

The human toll

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

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” of even immigrants with legal status in the United States. United States and “even, potentially, naturalized U.S. citizens and their communities.”

“They would live in the shadow of armed repression as the United States attacked its neighbors and, as social scientists have discovered under the Trump administration, they would be inclined to fear that they and their children are next,” the report said.

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

“If a man commits acts of gun violence and is taken to prison, that’s family separation, which, of course, is tragic for the children, but you have to pursue the criminals and enforce the law,” said Vance to the journalists. September during the visit to the border.