Q&A – Does Trump Have Enough Money to Carry Out Mass Deportations?
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Now that the BBB is signed, does @Potus have what he needs to ramp up deportations?
Bottom Line: So, there are a couple of important points here. With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act now law, President Trump will have the resources he needs to carry out his agenda, specifically on immigration, going forward. Specifically, the law includes $46.5 billion in funding for an “integrated border barrier system” - better known as the southern border wall, and a total of $74.9 billion for ICE detention and deportation activities. Now this is the first place where it’s worth pumping the breaks a little bit as to whether Trump does have all the resources needed to fully carry out his agenda.
In early June, I estimated the high-end cost to complete the southern border wall (based on DHS data), to be around $12 billion. The greater than $46 billion allocated for a border barrier system, is not only enough to finish construction of the southern border wall, but it could effectively cover the cost of a northern wall too! Maybe that’s President Trump’s eventual plan if Canada doesn’t agree to become the 51st state (I’m kidding...about the 51st state thing anyway). As for whether the Trump administration has the resources needed to carry out mass deportations...that depends.
Based on the latest DHS data, the average cost to arrest, detain, and deport an illegal alien is $17,121. If all $74.9 billion in appropriations for ICE activities went exclusively towards this effort, the Trump administration could deport about 4.4 million illegal aliens. To put this into perspective, that would only account for about a third of the total estimated border crossers that came in during the Biden administration. Here’s a breakout of what that looks like:
- 10.8 million encounters with Customs and Border Patrol
- 2 million “gotaways”
- 1.4 million granted Temporary Protected Status
- 937 thousand brought in through the CBP One Home app
That’s a grand total of 15.1 million people that are in question, again stemming from only what transpired during Biden’s four years. Last year 1.3 million total immigration cases (those seeking asylum were completed). Out of them, only 34% of asylum seekers completed the legal process (meaning two-thirds never showed up for court appointments, etc.) and of those who did complete the process, only 35.8% were granted asylum. This means that 88% of asylum seekers were ultimately determined to be illegal immigrants upon having completed the legal process.
So, for the sake of this exercise, let’s use that information and project that out. An estimated 13.3 million of the 15.1 million non-citizens to enter the United States under the Biden administration, are illegal immigrants. With the administration only having the resources to arrest, detain and deport 4.4 million based on the most recent cost of the process, the Trump administration only has right at a third of what it needs to deport the illegal immigrants that were allowed in under the Biden administration. Now perhaps in time the detention and deportation process will become more efficient, that would be the hope and expectation if “mass” deportations were to eventually take place. However, even, then it’s hard to see how there would be anywhere near enough to cover only the illegal immigrants allowed into the country under the four years of Biden administration.
As much as anything, this breakout demonstrates the extent of the damage done during the Biden administration that will likely never be completely undone. That was always the plan – to flood the country and overwhelm the system. It’s straight out of Rules for Radicals.