How would Donald Trump carry out his mass deportation scheme?

When Donald Trump takes office in January, his administration plans to ignite the “largest deportation operation in American history” to rid the US of people that he has claimed are “poisoning the blood” of the country.

The steps required to carry out this kind of campaign, which his supporters clamored for with “mass deportation now” signs at his rallies, would be unprecedented. It would involve made-for-TV raids designed to instill fear and menace. It would require the cooperation of local law enforcement. Tents would be put up for migrants in which to wait before being sent away. Hundreds of thousands could be deported quickly. The incoming president plans to use obscure laws to justify these removals. Places previously seen as off-limits to immigration agents, like churches or schools, could become targets.

A memo from the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this year laid out the mechanics of a mass deportation. Trump would need to arrest millions of people, put them into removal proceedings before judges, litigate those cases including appeals and then actually remove them – a herculean task with constitutional and statutory requirements at each step.

“No part of it has ever operated at anything approaching the scale and speed that Trump’s plan requires,” the organization wrote. “There can be no doubt that Trump would attempt to defy constitutional and other legal protections in service of his draconian goal.”

There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, estimates show. Vice-president-elect JD Vance has suggested 1 million people could be deported each year. For context, Trump deported about 1.5 million people during his first term.

Jason Houser, a former chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) under Biden, was more blunt about the coming wave of deportations in an interview with radio show This American Life.

“I think the first 90 days is going to be hell,” he told the show. “You’re going to see the buses … You’re going to see kids not in your schools. You’re going to know where they’re at because they’re waiting in a detention cell and they have cellphones. You’re going to see it in social media. You’re going to see businesses not be able to open up because their workers didn’t show up. You’re going to see businesses being raided.”

This is what a swift, large-scale deportation movement could look like once Trump takes office.

Ending programs and ‘low-hanging fruit’

Trump and his “border czar”, Tom Homan, have said they intend to first deport people who are facing criminal charges. But their plans don’t stop there. They have not been clear on who, if anyone, could be spared from removal, including the millions who have been in the US for many years and have established community ties.

Trump can quickly end programs that Biden started via executive order, and he likely will do so. He can also direct agencies to reorder their priorities, such as who is granted parole to stay in the country on an emergency basis.

Some examples of people in the US under parole programs include Afghans here under temporary protected status, and Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. These groups are easily tracked by the government – they were fingerprinted and are able to work here.

People brought to the US as children and covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, often referred to as Dreamers, could be at risk – but likely not immediately. They are a politically more popular group of immigrants, said Michelle Lapointe, the legal director for the American Immigration Council. But ongoing legal challenges could end Daca, giving the Trump administration “the outcome they want without having to do anything new”.

Immigration advocates expect Trump to go after “low-hanging fruit”. This would include people who have final orders of removal who have exhausted their legal rights in the courts. Trump did this during his first term. “There’s nothing stopping the new administration from looking to target those people right away,” Lapointe said.

The incoming administration has also signaled it will again try to expand “expedited removals”, a way to remove undocumented immigrants without the typical legal processes if they meet certain parameters, like being in the country less than two years.

Red states versus blue states

Trump will probably target cities that seek to defy immigration enforcement to make a point that he can deport people from anywhere, which could lead to showdowns between Democratic jurisdictions and the feds.

“The first raids are going to look heavily militarized, even if they won’t involve the military,” said Naureen Shah, the deputy director of government affairs for the American Civil Liberties Union. “I think it’s going to be choreographed to create a sense of fear and chaos in immigrant communities, because they cannot actually operate at the scale that they want.”

Trump will also deport from red states that will work in concert with the federal government and provide the resources and cooperation needed to achieve his goals. In Arizona, voters approved a ballot measure that will allow local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws. Other states have pledged to participate in deportation plans.

Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a Chicago alderman, previously worked on casework in Representative Luis Gutiérrez’s office. He would often get phone calls from people outside the office’s geographical area seeking help from deportations.

“They were from Alabama, they were from Missouri. They were from rural communities in Georgia. They were from places where the infrastructure to support immigrant families was very sparse or nonexistent,” Ramirez-Rosa said.

Trump has threatened to use the military to carry out deportations, which Lapointe said would be “ugly and extremely controversial”. The president-elect’s team has also suggested using law enforcement from a friendlier state to arrest people in a state hostile to deportations, the ACLU memo notes. Because there are not enough Ice agents to operate at Trump’s desired scale, he will use the 287(g) program to seek local law enforcement collaborators. The ACLU also expects some local law enforcement to “act as badge-wearing vigilantes” and use minor offenses to funnel immigrants into the deportation process.

Workplace raids, which Trump used in his first term, are expected to be part of the plan. In his first term, one target of raids was east Tennessee, where one woman previously told the Guardian she and her colleagues were rounded up on buses and sent to detention centers.

“We definitely expect them,” Lapointe said. “I don’t know, operationally, how many they can carry out. They do it for purposes of instilling fear in communities, and so that’s part of their strategy here is terrorize the maximum number of people possible, and perhaps suggest that people will give up their rights voluntarily or leave voluntarily.”

Ice agents have typically avoided churches, schools and hospitals, known as “sensitive locations”, but they could be back on the table. “They are so aggressive, I wouldn’t put anything out of the realm of possibility for them,” Lapointe said.

Trump might target heads of household, cutting off financial resources for a family and forcing them to make difficult decisions on whether to stay in the country, Shah said.

Deportation requires detention

Large-scale arrests will require more space to detain people as they await immigration proceedings. Immigrant rights advocates say there is not enough space in existing bricks-and-mortar facilities for these detentions.

Houser, the former Ice official, told This American Life that detention facilities could lower their standards to house more people, like by putting more people into a jail cell than their current policies allow. He said unused warehouses or former department stores could be turned into detention camps.

The federal government will also try to use space in state or local prisons or jails to house migrants, Lapointe said.

There will be tent cities constructed to temporarily house people. Texas has offered state land to use for deportation facilities. Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration adviser, told the New York Times in 2023 that single adults would mostly be housed in these tent camps because a legal settlement prevents indefinite detentions of children.

These “soft-sided facilities” could be sources of unrest and unsafe conditions, Houser warned, both for migrants and Ice agents.

To actually remove people to other countries, planes will be loaded up with migrants and return people to their countries of origin. Some countries accept few deportation flights, making returns difficult or slow. But, Houser warned, he could see Trump sending flights to wherever will take them.

“Why not load up a few planeloads of Cuban nationals and send them to the Bahamas and just send them to a third party?” he said. “I could go find a country that says they’ll accept three or four planeloads of Cuban nationals, and I’ll send them to a third-party country.”

Roadblocks that could stall Trump’s plans

Trump wanted to deport far more people than he was able to in his first term, blocked by a combination of resources, court rulings and federal bureaucracy.

Congress will play a role in deciding whether to fund a large-scale deportation scheme and in serving as a check if Trump tries to divert funds from other purposes toward deporting people. Congress can also require site visits of detention facilities as a part of appropriating money, the ACLU’s memo suggests.

Cities and states that oppose such deportations can refuse to participate in Ice actions or aid immigration agents. They could also fight plans to federalize their state national guard units, depending on the legal underpinnings the Trump administration uses to call them up. He has said he plans to use the Insurrection Act to dispatch the military as a domestic force.

Liberal and immigrant advocacy groups will also use the courts to push back against Trump. The president-elect has said he intends to use the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that allows the country to deport undocumented people from enemy nations during a time of war, a legal theory that will undoubtedly invite lawsuits. The Brennan Center for Justice notes that the law “is best known for its role in Japanese internment, a shameful part of US history for which Congress, presidents and the courts have apologized”.

“We’ll go to the courts,” Lapointe said. “We will point out the instances of illegal behavior and lack of due process and hope that the guardrails hold.”

There will be economic effects from mass deportation – from the high cost of detentions and deportations themselves, the ripple in industries such as farming and construction, and the loss of tax revenues, the American Immigration Council estimates.

And there’s the crucial role of the public, which could oppose deportations if the Trump administration’s campaign becomes too aggressive or affects them in ways they didn’t anticipate.

“I think they’re going to overreach, and I think that there’ll be a backlash, partly because communities do not want to be terrorized, and because the human cost will become clear, and also because it will wreck our economy,” Shah said.