Trump’s mass deportation plan could clog immigration courts for years
It’s one thing to call for the largest deportation in American history. It’s another to pull it off logistically, given the highly complex process of spotting, detaining, holding and evicting people in the U.S. illegally.
Why it matters: The judicial process — one small piece of a long, expensive deportation machinery — illustrates vividly the complexity ahead.
The big picture: The U.S. immigration system’s backlog of 3.7 million court cases will take four years to resolve at the current pace — but that could balloon to 16 years under President-elect Trump’s mass deportation plan, according to an Axios analysis.
- Without a huge increase in immigration judges, millions of new cases would flood the non-criminal system. Trump’s administration likely would need new detention centers nationwide to hold people suspected of being in the U.S. without authorization — possibly for years.
- The administration also would have to set up a wide range of monitoring systems for immigrants who aren’t detained but are awaiting court dates.
- Immigration experts estimate the whole operation could cost taxpayers $150 billion to $350 billion.