The American Immigration Council estimates the cost to be nearly $1 trillion over 10 years.
SAN DIEGO — Former President Donald Trump promised to carry out the largest mass deportation in American history if elected, but a new report puts a price tag on that promise.
The American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C.-based immigrant advocacy nonprofit, estimates the cost of mass deportations to be about $88 billion a year, or nearly $1 trillion over 10 years. To arrive at this price, we analyzed federal budget documents, government reports, inspector general investigations, and conducted an economic analysis.
“If anything, this is a conservative estimate,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “That’s because putting a million people in detention centers, as some people are calling for, is a hugely expensive undertaking.”
He said about 1.9 people are currently being detained each day across the United States.
“If we wanted to detain 1 million immigrants a year, that would mean we would have to build new detention capacity in the United States, which would be about 50 to 60 percent more expensive than our current system. It’s a country that’s already detaining a lot of immigrants.”If you want to lock up more people and immigrants, it’s going to cost you a lot of money. ”
However, some argue that this is a safety issue, a security threat.
“60 Minutes” spoke with Tom Homan, who served as ICE director during former President Trump’s term.
“Illegal immigration is bad. It’s a crime. It encourages illegal immigration when there are no consequences. The Biden-Harris administration has proven this. If you go to the border and turn yourself in, you can be released within 24 days. “For hours,” Homan told reporter Cecilia Vega.
“It’s not mass clearing of neighborhoods. It’s not building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous,” he added.
“They’re going to be targeted arrests. We’re going to know based on a lot of research, the investigative process, who we’re going to arrest and where we’re most likely to find them. ” he said.
Click here to read the American Immigration Council’s full analysis.
