Over the past few months, I’ve argued that the country doesn’t have the resources to carry out Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, many of whom work in agricultural, construction, and service jobs. Worse for Trump, the law isn’t favorable to his war against sanctuary cities and states.
Now, not even four weeks into Trump’s new administration, Axios is reporting just what I predicted: Efforts to ramp up deportations are “stretching the limits” of the government.
“A lack of funds, detention space, officers and infrastructure to handle arrested immigrants is frustrating many involved in the effort—and made goals such as 1 million deportations this year seem unrealistic,” the outlet writes.
The American Immigration Council, a nonprofit think tank, estimates that deporting 1 million a year could cost $88 billion annually—all while removing workers from the labor market could ding the U.S. gross domestic product by up to $1.7 trillion.
So far, Axios reports that Trump has asked Congress for an immediate $175 billion to get the ball rolling—but even that huge price tag is running into budget troubles. Republicans seemingly can’t pay for that and give billionaires their cherished $4.5 trillion tax cut. There are only so many social programs they can slash, and even that isn’t coming close to paying for the proposed tax cut’s outrageous cost.
Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama
"At the end of the day, we've gotta just spend money," Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville told Axios. "Unfortunately the American taxpayers are going to have to pay the bill on this."
Except that “the American taxpayers” apparently don’t include the aforementioned billionaires, whom Republicans are fighting so hard to further enrich. If these hard-working undocumented immigrants are such a threat to our nation, then it should be those billionaires’ patriotic duty to step up and help cover the costs.
It’s all bullshit, of course. Xenophobia played well on the campaign trail, but in the end, governing is about paying off their richest benefactors.
So where does that leave Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency tasked with these deportations?
Though ICE appears to be arresting more people than it did under President Joe Biden, the data is incomplete and hasn’t been updated recently. Its numbers may even be slipping recently, according to NBC News. And that could be why ICE ceased publishing daily arrest totals to X after Feb. 1. Since then, the agency prefers to post about individual arrests it conducts, which emphasizes how much this is more about the optics of deportation than the execution of it.
An optics-first approach would also explain why ICE is seemingly gaming Google results to recycle old press releases, making it look as if they’re deporting even more.
Ironically, all that public bluster is making it harder for ICE to arrest undocumented immigrants.
"It's all about operational security," border czar Tom Homan said, according to Axios. "We may have to stop the media ride-alongs because—I'm not pointing the finger at them—but the less people that know about these operations, the safer it is for our agents."
One place where Democrats and Republicans could find common ground on immigration? Dramatically expanding the number of immigration judges so that cases don’t get stuck awaiting adjudication. The current system just hit a backlog of 4 million cases. That serves no one’s interests.
Not that “common ground” matters right now. This is the GOP’s show. And as long as they’re prioritizing billionaire tax cuts and the optics of mass deportations, odds are good we’ll be in the same place in four years.
And red states, well, they’ll no doubt be in a worse place.
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