Consider This from NPR - Trump is promising mass deportations. His own record shows it's not so simple

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Donald Trump is pledging to go further on immigration than he did in his first term as president, if he is re-elected in November.Internal emails and documents from Trump's time in office — obtained by NPR through the Freedom of Information Act — shed light on how realistic his plan is to radically expand the United States' deportation system.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Donald Trump won the White House the first time, in part by promising an aggressive crackdown on immigration. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. A controversial Muslim travel ban went into effect within days of Trump taking office. By the second year of his term, the Trump administration was separating kids from parents at the border. It was part of the administration's zero tolerance policy. Here was Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in May 2018. Don't break the law. I mean, that's why they're separated, because they're breaking the law. I mean, that's why they're separated, because they're breaking the law.

If Donald Trump gets back into the White House, he is promising to go even further on immigration. Here he was speaking at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan last month. That is why as soon as I take the oath of office, we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country. Consider this.

Donald Trump wants to radically expand the U.S.'s deportation system. But can it actually be done? The answers may lie in his first presidential term. From NPR, I'm Ilsa Chang. It's Consider This from NPR. At the Republican National Convention this summer, hundreds of attendees waved signs demanding mass deportation now. And all over the country, former President Trump's supporters cheer when he repeats this promise. When I'm reelected, we will begin, and we have no choice, the largest deportation operation in American history. We will seal the border, stop the invasion, and send the illegal aliens back home where they belong.

Now, Trump's former immigration advisors are laying out ambitious plans for a second term, including Tom Homan, the former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They ain't seen shit yet. Wait till 2025. Trump comes back in January, I'll be honest, he was coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen. But the Trump administration's own track record reveals why that will be difficult to execute. For more, we turn now to two NPR reporters, Joel Rose and Sergio Martinez Beltran. They've been looking through internal emails and documents from Trump's time in office. The documents that NPR has obtained shed light on how immigration authorities scrambled to respond to the White House and what that might tell us about a potential second Trump administration. Hey to both of you. Hey, hi there. So we've heard a lot already about Trump's promises on deportation.

What do we know about how he would actually make any of those promises a reality? Right. I mean, he hasn't presented any details. Everything Trump has said is sweeping, but, you know, pretty vague. He has vowed to deport anywhere from 15 to 20 million unauthorized migrants. But that number is way higher than what the Department of Homeland Security reports. The agency estimates there are about 11 million unlawful migrants. Now, Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, was asked about this by ABC News over the weekend, and his answer could give us a glimpse into their potential approach.

You cannot have a border unless you're willing to deport some people. I think it's interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let's start with 1 million. Van says maybe the initial focus should be on violent criminals, but it's not clear how he got that 1 million number. But I should note also that we've heard big promises from Trump before of removing millions of people, but he could not pull it off. Trump was not able to remove as many people as the

Obama administration, for instance. Right. Well, Joel, these Trump administration documents that you've been reading through, the NPR obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, what exactly are these documents and what do they tell us? Yeah, these are documents that we got after multiple years of litigation, and they give us a window into how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, pushed to ramp up its detention capacity basically as soon as Trump came into office. But they also show how bureaucratic hurdles slowed that process down. If you look back to January of 2017, President Trump signed several executive orders

on immigration in his first week in office. And the very next day, the ICE official in charge of immigration detention sent an email with the subject line proposed facility activations. Now, some of the facilities on that list did work out for ICE. Some of them didn't. But it took a long time to get those facilities up and running. I talked to Ron Vitello, who was the acting director of ICE under President Trump from 2018 to 2019. And here's how Vitello described that moment. In the government, sometimes it's designed not to move quickly. It's hard to get from where you are to where you want to be in a rapid pace. So it was a full court press. Eventually, ICE did add about 15,000 detention beds under President Trump, which is a jump of about 35%.

But that took years. It was not as fast or as easy as his advisors may have wanted. And I think that's reason to be skeptical about Trump's promises this time around. Well, your reporting also showed that securing enough detention space was a big obstacle for the Trump administration. Why is detention space so critical for ICE? It's because ICE does not just arrest people in the interior of the country and then deport them immediately the next day. It

is much more complicated than that. I spoke to Sarah Saldana, who's a former ICE director under President Obama. Here's part of what she told me. You're not going to pick up an unauthorized immigrant one day and put them on a plane the next. It requires a lot of groundwork. And so now you've got another problem. What to do with these people? You can't dump them in another country. So detention space can limit, in other words, how many people ICE can deport.

Also, shortages of resources, especially personnel at ICE, can be an obstacle. ICE just does not have the staff to deport millions of people. And there are other obstacles, too. Immigrants have rights, and they can fight their deportation in court. So there are a number of obstacles to pulling off the kind of mass deportation operation we're hearing about. Well, Sergio, turning back to you, you talk about how Trump could not remove as many people from this country as he had wanted. You've been listening to allies of the former president. Why do they think things would be different this time around if Trump were to win?

Right. You know, his closest allies say this is doable because there's some existing infrastructure now they could use to carry this mission. You might remember Stephen Miller, who was one of Trump's advisors and the person who helped shape a lot of the more hardline immigration policies coming out of the Trump White House. So he's now the president of the Trump-aligned organization called America First Legal. And he talked to conservative podcast host Charlie Carrick last year about what's needed for mass deportations. President Trump has outlined a plan that involves building large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas, because of the existing infrastructure there, right, the roads, the jeeps, the aircraft, the personnel. Critics say this would be a de facto detention camp.

Trump has told reporters he's not ruling anything out, and he has certainly not backed away from this idea of mass deportations. If you talk to Obama appointees, though, they say this is basically a campaign slogan. It's a message that a particular group of voters want to hear, but they say it's not really a feasible or a workable policy. Well, Joel, former President Trump calls his deportation plan historic. That is his word. Is he actually right about that? Like, have we ever seen anything like this before in U.S. history? We have. And former President Trump often talks

about it, actually. He talks about another Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, and his push for mass deportation. Although Trump, I should note, never actually uses its official name, which comes from a racist term for Mexicans who swam or waded across the Rio Grande. You know, never actually uses its official name, which comes from a racist term for Mexicans who swam or waded across the Rio Grande. You know, immigration authorities back in the 1950s claimed to have rounded up and removed more than a million people, although historians now say that number was very likely inflated. We do know that a lot of U.S. citizens were among those who were rounded up and removed, and that hundreds of those deportees died during roundups or on ships that were bound for Mexico.

Wow. Well, how might Trump carry out an operation like that today, Sergio? That's the question, right? Because it is expensive and there's just not enough staff. We're talking about 6,000 ice removal agents to deport millions of people, right? So, I mean, it sounds impossible. So Trump has suggested asking local law enforcement agencies across the country to help with this. Now, in the past, partnerships like this have worked in some places,

but not necessarily in the bigger cities where there are more progressive policies. But Trump says this is what's going to help. He's also talked about using the National Guard. And I would not be surprised also if red states might want to help. He's also talked about using the National Guard. And I would not be surprised, Elsa, if red states might want to help. I'm thinking of Texas, which has been using local law enforcement and the state National Guard to try to curtail illegal migration, even though that's the job of the federal government. So Texas and potentially other states might be key in the implementation of these mass deportations. That is NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran and Joel Rose. Thank you to both of you.

You're welcome. You're welcome. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers. It was edited by Courtney Dorning, Alfredo Carbajal, and Eric Westervelt. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. And one more thing before we go, you can now enjoy the Consider This newsletter.

We still help you break down a major story of the day, but you'll also get to know our producers and hosts and some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team. You can sign up at npr.org slash consider this newsletter. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.