Will Trump’s Mass Deportation Depend on Self-Deportation?

Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan. Photo: Matt Rourke/AP Photo

During the murky debate among Republicans about the legislative strategy for implementing Donald Trump’s agenda, the key sticking point has been whether to rush out of the gate with one filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill focused on “border security” and reversing Democratic climate-change policies, followed by a second bill doing everything else Trump wants, or instead wait and do everything in one “big, beautiful bill” (as the president-elect has called it) in the spring. The key argument for a single bill has been that the GOP’s tenuous hold on the House could make passage of two giant high-stakes bill perilous. Rolling everything into one legislative vehicle also makes it easier to frame the vote on it as a simple referendum on Trump’s leadership, which no Republicans will want to reject even if they have issues with particular provisions.

The downside to a spring offensive (which could easily bleed over into the summer), of course, is that Team Trump will not necessarily “hit the ground running,” at least on items that cannot be accomplished via executive actions. Delays could become especially problematic for the new administration’s signature mass-deportation program for undocumented immigrants, which will require massive new funding for policing the borders and detecting and deporting millions of potential targets.

Trump’s advisers have not released any cost estimates for their plans; Trump himself has said mass deportation is so critical that there is “no price tag” on making it happen. The most commonly cited study, from the anti-deportation American Immigration Council, puts it at $315 billion if conducted in one big push and $967 billion if extended over a ten-year period. Even if you quibble with such numbers, mass deportation is not happening without major new funding from Congress.

So it’s extremely important for the incoming gang of nativists that they find a way to get mass deportation going on the cheap. And as Adrian Carrasquillo explains at The Bulwark, the easiest way is via a strategy once identified with 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney — self-deportation:

[It’s] a policy of “attrition through enforcement” — basically making the lives of undocumented immigrants so unbearable that they have no choice but to leave. The strategy is “currently embodied in state laws that include provisions denying education, transportation, and even basic services like water and housing to anyone who cannot prove legal immigration status,” the council wrote, arguing states that attempted to roll out this plan did little more than “undermine basic human rights, devastate local economies, and place unnecessary burdens on U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants.”

Self-deportation has received renewed support in recent years from figures on the right like Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, as well as [conservative activist Mark] Krikorian and anti-immigration groups like the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FAIR).

At the federal level, the primary spur to self-deportation can be summed up in one word: fear. And while some of the fear-mongering we’ve been hearing from Team Trump since long before Election Day has been designed to please the deportation-loving MAGA base, it also serves to alarm immigrants who either lack citizenship papers or don’t particularly want to be targeted and hassled by law enforcement. Either way, it’s an inexpensive way to reduce the immigrant population, notes Carrasquillo:

When it comes to Trump world, the projection of fear is not a bug: It is a feature of their revitalized deportation machine. Just this past week, according to an NBC News report, the Trump transition team warned of “showcase” workplace raids, possibly in the Washington D.C. area, which has activist and immigrant communities on high alert in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. Tom Homan, Trump’s incoming border czar, separately told NBC he plans to bring a “fresh” idea to the table — a hotline for Americans to report undocumented immigrants they suspect of having committing crimes, which is of course ripe for abuse. And in that same report, Homan casually remarked that people without criminal records will get caught in the deportation dragnet, too.

Why such public gestures? Because the incoming administration’s immigration approach is more about generating shock than awe.

Even if the threat of massive enforcement actions doesn’t convince immigrants to self-deport, it can certainly create the impression that the administration is doing more than is actually the case. And that may provide enough of a “running start” on its plans to suffice until the money rolls in and a coercive deportation system can be built for real.

It’s kind of a shame that Mitt Romney is no longer in Washington to explain it all.