The administration of the US President Donald Trump plans to deport up to one million illegal immigrants from the country during his first year in office — this is the figure often heard in private conversations.
This is reported by The Washington Post, citing four current and former federal officials familiar with the plans of Trump and his administration.
However, it is currently unknown what criteria the US presidentʼs team is using to calculate these deportations. Deporting a million migrants in a year would significantly exceed all previous figures — the current record is over 400 000 deportations per year under Barack Obama.
The publication writes: analysts say that such plans of Trump are unrealistic due to limited funding, lack of personnel and the fact that most migrants have the right to appeal the decision on deportation in court. And due to the workload of the courts, this process can take months or even years. In total, about 11 million illegal immigrants are in the United States.
One of the main reasons why deporting a million people will be difficult is that far fewer people are crossing the border illegally. And it is these migrants who typically make up the majority of those deported. After Trump sent hundreds of troops to the border, the number of illegal crossings in March fell to 7 000, the lowest level in a decade.
White House adviser Stephen Miller is working with the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies to implement the deportation plan. One option to quickly increase the number is to try to deport some of the 1.4 million migrants who already have deportation orders but have not yet been deported because their countries refuse to accept them.
The US government is currently in talks with about 30 countries to agree to accept such migrants, even if they are not their citizens. In a recent court filing, the administration said it plans to send “thousands” of people to such so-called third countries.
There are known cases in the US where people were deported to countries other than their own, including Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama. One migrant was deported to Rwanda after lengthy negotiations between his lawyers and the administration of former US President Joe Biden.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not comment on the reported deportation rate, but noted in an email that the Trump administration has a mandate from voters to fix the border security and migration policies that Biden has pursued.
"We are taking a comprehensive approach to effectively deport terrorists and criminals who are in the country illegally," he said.
Analysts say that detention centers are almost full — at the end of March this year, more than 47 000 people were being held there.
At the same time, three former officials said that due to funding problems, legal difficulties and constant criticism from the White House, many immigration officers have suffered a significant drop in motivation — even though they are already working at their limits.
The administration is asking Congress to pass a major new budget bill to expand immigration enforcement. But even if the bill passes, it will still require hiring new officers, contracting with immigration detention centers, and organizing special deportation flights. And that process will take time.
The number of flights carrying deportees increased only slightly, from 100 in January to 134 in March (15% more than the average for the previous six months), which is still not enough to deport a million people in a year.
Official figures on deportations are now almost impossible to come by, as the Trump administration has stopped publishing monthly reports from the Department of Homeland Securityʼs (DHS) Bureau of Immigration Statistics, which were last released before Trumpʼs inauguration. Now, all thatʼs available are general figures provided by political appointees.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said that more than 100 000 migrants had been deported as of the end of March. She later clarified that this was a combined figure: this includes arrests made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) inside the United States and detentions made by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the border.
Since then, she said, another 17 000 people have been deported. McLaughlin says that doesnʼt include those who left the country voluntarily.
While domestic arrests have skyrocketed, deportations have not kept pace. ICE is expected to arrest about 240 000 immigrants this fiscal year — double the number it arrested last year. But it is likely to deport only 212 000, compared with more than 271 000 last year — and most of them are being held at the border.
WP notes that ICEʼs haste has alarmed human rights activists and judges. In March, for example, officers accidentally deported a man from El Salvador to his prison, even though a court had forbidden it because of a threat to his life from gangs.
Judges in Texas and New York have already blocked the administrationʼs attempts to use the military powers law to deport Venezuelan crime suspects without trial.
And a court in Boston temporarily banned the deportation of people to countries of which they are not citizens unless they have been given a genuine opportunity to seek humanitarian protection in the United States.
After that, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem issued new rules: officers must check whether a third country guarantees that a migrant will not be tortured or persecuted there. If there is no such guarantee, the migrant must be warned where he is being sent and given the opportunity to appeal the decision.
If a migrant says they fear deportation, they will be referred to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for review. This review should last no longer than 24 hours — it can be conducted remotely. Lawyers believe that 24 hours is too short for a migrant to fully defend themselves.
The document also states that if a person cannot prove that the probability of torture in the country to which they want to deport them exceeds 50%, they will be deported. If they can prove this, the case will be referred to a court or ICE, which may decide to send them to another country.
Trumpʼs immigration policy
During the election campaign, Trump said he wanted to deport "millions" of migrants, while Vice President J.D. Vance said he could start with one million.
On the first day of his presidency, Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting the issuance of American citizenship documents to children born in the United States to parents who are either illegally in the United States or in situations where the mother is temporarily in the United States, such as on a visa, and the father is not a citizen.
And the next day, he signed an executive order closing the countryʼs southern border, that is, with Mexico, to "illegal immigrants" and ordering the deportation of those who entered the United States illegally from Mexico.
The United States subsequently suspended a number of programs that allowed immigrants to temporarily settle in the country. In particular, the Uniting for Ukraine program, which allowed Ukrainians to enter. The decision will block the entry of immigrants fleeing some of the most unstable and dangerous places in the world. In addition to Ukraine, the programs offered temporary protection to immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela.
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