Some 100,000 undocumented immigrants annually are torn from their families and deported through ICE Air Operations—yes, that’s sadly a real thing—a division of ICE that charters planes to fly deportees back to their home countries. Flights are heavily guarded and immigrants are handcuffed. “Passengers do get a free meal onboard,” notes the CNN report, though for many getting deported to countries like El Salvador—“the murder capital of the world”—it probably feels more like a last meal. ICE Air stands to be one of the programs that will be turbo-boosted if Trump is able to see out his mass deportation vision, which will not only be “one of the worst global humanitarian atrocities in recent history,” but an expensive one too:
Transporting deportees to their home countries cost an average of $1,978 per person last year, according to ICE.
A chartered flight costs about $7,785 per flight hour, ICE says. That covers the cost of not only the aircraft and fuel, but also a pilot, flight crew, security personnel and a nurse onboard.
And, that’s all carried out with our tax dollars. But no money for Head Start or cancer research, right?
According to CNN, Mexico received the largest number of the 240,000 undocumented immigrants deported last year, though only about 10 percent were removed through ICE Air. There’s been definitive proof that Trump’s deportation force is ramping up arrests of undocumented immigrants—one of the few promises he’s actually been able to keep, and probably one of the few reasons why his base keeps hanging despite voting against their own best interests—and deportations themselves could soon follow in surging.
Last year, America’s Voice found that Trump’s mass deportation plan would be an economic disaster with unimaginable human costs. Not only would sweeping up undocumented immigrants from their families, homes, and workplaces devastate our economy by removing $12 billion in tax revenue, the cost of deporting 11 million people in 18 months—that’s 14 human beings per minute around the clock—could end up costing you and me up to $1 trillion dollars.
President Trump’s immigration plan would cost between $735 and $935 billion, according to some estimates. The federal government would have to spend close to $52 billion dollars a month in order to carry out a deportation strategy of this magnitude.
“In its latest budget proposal,” notes CNN, “the White House asked for an additional $1.5 billion to expand efforts to detain, transport and deport undocumented immigrants.” But remember that while it’s Trump and Department of Homeland Security Sec. John Kelly that control ICE, it’s Congress that controls the purse strings, and Democrats should use every maneuver possible to starve ICE to make sure Trump’s vision is not carried out. It’s not just dollars and budgets we’re dealing with here. It’s people.