Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump finally offered some specifics as to how he would implement his controversial plan to deport the entire undocumented population in the U.S. if he is to become President. In a teleconference with Alabama Republicans last week, the real estate billionaire claimed it would take him 18 months to two years to get the estimated 11.3 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. to leave the country, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“We have to get them out. If we have wonderful cases, they can come back in, but they have to come back in legally,” Trump said in an audio clip posted on YouTube on September 10.
On the call, Trump was asked for details about how long it would take to round up illegal immigrants living in the U.S., with the questioner asking if "five or ten years" was an appropriate time frame. Trump said his two-year benchmark could be met with “really good management,” according to The Journal.
To put this in perspective, an 18 month to two year time frame would mean between 458,000 and 611,000 deportations per month. In all of 2013, the Obama Administration deported a record of 438,000 immigrants. In other words, Trump wants to deport in one month alone a higher number than the Obama administration deported in 12 months.
Once the undocumented people are all out, Trump said he would then build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to keep them from coming back, The Journal reported.
Trump did not address the cost and the negative impact to the U.S. economy of such a mass removal plan. Studies have shown, however, its cost would be "prohibitively expensive" and trigger profound collateral economic consequences.
A 2015 study by the American Action Forum, a conservative pro-immigration group, estimates the federal government would have to spend roughly $400 billion to $600 billion to deport 11.3 million undocumented immigrants and prevent future unlawful entry into the U.S. over a 20 year time period.
In order to implement the plan, the study says, each immigrant would have to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and transported to his or her home country.
Mass deportation will burden the economy, the report goes on. Removing all undocumented immigrants would cause the labor force to shrink by 6.4%. As a result, 20 years from now the economy would be nearly 6% or $1.6 trillion smaller than it would be if the immigrants are allowed to stay.
While this impact would be found throughout the economy, the agriculture, construction, retail and hospitality sectors would be especially strongly affected, the report indicates.
A 2010 study by the Center for American Progress, a pro-immigration liberal think-tank, is less optimistic, showing that the total cost of mass deportation and border interdiction and enforcement efforts would be $285 billion (in 2008 dollars) over five years.
"Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, is essentially the enforcement-only status quo on steroids… this option would be prohibitively expensive and trigger profound collateral consequences," the Center warned five years prior to Trump's call for mass deportation.
Trump has rejected the money estimates. "Well, first of all, they're wrong," Trump said August 23 on ABC's This Week referring to the American Action Forum's estimates.
Trump's plan would also be likely to spark other issues. Jon Green, a political scientist who was regional field director of Obama's re-election campaign in 2012, warned that Trump's two-year plan, "is nothing less than the transformation of the United States into a dystopian police state, with the racial profiling, disregard for privacy rights, nighttime police raids and generalized paranoia to match."
Twitter: @DoliaEstevez
