Former President Donald Trump is in the final month of the presidential campaign double on his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history.

In Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump received loud applause last week a rally crowd after saying he would “take these people out” and “deport them so quickly.” In Aurora, Coloon Friday, Trump said to the rally participants he would “save Aurora and every city that was invaded and conquered.”

Immigration researchers, lawyers and economists have pointed to the immense constitutional, humanitarian and economic problems posed by Trump’s oft-repeated promise. But beyond the expected harm to immigrant families, communities and local economies, the detention and deportation of some 11 million people is nearly impossible to finance, according to a CBS News analysis of U.S. budget and immigration court data.

Even if Congress were to approve hundreds of billions of dollars in spending, deporting every undocumented immigrant living in the U.S. would take far longer than four years, the analysis said.

CBS News’ analysis of immigration system data found:

• Arresting and deporting just one million people could cost taxpayers about $20 billion.
• Deporting 11 million people over four years would cost more than 20 times what the country has spent annually deporting people living in the United States over the past five years. Most of it would be new funding, which would have to be approved by a majority of both houses of Congress.
• Assuming Trump gets the funding and can quickly increase immigration and court staffing, the case backlog would increase — not decrease — by millions of cases, based on what happened in the last two administrations.
• Trump’s own administration, despite promising to deport millions in 2016deported 325,660 people during his years in office.

The costs of deportation are borne by the taxpayer

According to a CBS News analysis of federal data, deporting a person cost an average of $19,599 over the last five fiscal years. This number is based on budget allocations for each step of the deportation process: the apprehension of an undocumented immigrant living in the United States, the detention, the immigration court proceedings, and the transport out of the country.

From 2021 to 2023, when migrant crossings reached the southern border Record highsImmigration and Customs Enforcement sent about a sixth of its workforce normally responsible for deportations to the border to support Customs and Border Patrol. (have intersections rejected since then.)

ICE has also redirected resources to removals Title 42an emergency health authority issued during the pandemic that allowed the Border Patrol to turn away migrants trying to cross the border. Fewer people were deported from the U.S. interior in these years than in previous years, driving up the cost per deportation.

But even when Trump was president and border crossings were lower than during the post-pandemic surge, the cost of deporting a person was still $14,614. Deporting all of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. at the time would have cost between $40 billion and $54 billion per year during the president’s next term – a total of up to $216 billion. ICE received just $9 billion last year.

Even the low end of that annual estimate, $40 billion, is enough to provide 20 million families with a child tax credit each year and is more than twice the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s total budget. Over four years, the sum — $160 billion to $216 billion — is comparable to the cost of building about half a million new homes across the country.

A similar analysis by the American Immigration Council put the total cost of deporting 11 million people even higher, at $315 billion.

“It can’t possibly be anywhere near 11 million.”

Trump said local law enforcement would help with mass deportations because “they know their names and their serial numbers.” Experts say it’s not that simple.

“One of the assumptions in the Trump proposal is that local police and sheriffs will work together,” said Abigail Andrews, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. “We know from the last few decades that one of the most important ways for cities and states to have a say in immigration processes was whether or not police were cooperating with ICE.”

Trump has announced that he would deploy the National Guard to identify and arrest immigrants who arrived illegally. That plan could face legal obstacles because the law prohibits the use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement unless Congress authorizes it. Trump responded by arguing that undocumented immigrants are “not civilians.”

Law enforcement could also end up racially profiling citizens and non-citizens to identify undocumented immigrants living in the United States

“We can’t do this without serious civil rights violations,” said Donald Kerwin, editor and founder of the Journal on Migration and Human Security. “Ultimately, it can’t possibly be anywhere near 11 million.”

Trump promised When he ran for office in 2016, it led to mass deportations, but in the fiscal years that spanned his term, ICE deported just 325,660 people from the U.S. interior

Even a mass deportation, depending on the scale, would probably not be completed in four years. According to Syracuse University, immigration courts in the U.S. are currently dealing with a backlog of 3.7 million cases. According to a study by the Congressional Research Service, the immigration court system would need eight more years and 700 additional judges — nearly double its current workforce — to fully eliminate the existing backlog.

Those who receive a “notice to appear” in immigration court may be scheduled for future court dates.

Using a tool developed by Kerwin and his son, independent researcher Brendan Kerwin, CBS News estimated the backlog of immigration cases would be 13.5 million by fiscal year 2028, when courts will receive 11 million new cases.

The tool takes into account the speed at which immigration judges process cases, the number of new cases per year, and the number of judges hired. The Executive Office of Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, plans to hire 150 new judges in fiscal year 2024. If the government hired 150 new judges every year for the next four years, the courts would have a backlog of 13.5 million cases by fiscal year 2028 from serving 11 million notices to undocumented immigrants.

Trump could take action to eliminate this legal process for some immigrants, which could reduce the backlog. Under a 1996 law, anyone apprehended within 100 miles of the border within two weeks of illegally crossing the border could be deported without a trial. The Trump administration before expanded This law applies to the entire country and to all undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally and have been living in the United States for less than two years.

Mass deportations would lead to job losses

Beyond the costs mentioned above, the deportation of millions of migrants could also have a negative impact on the U.S. economy and labor market.

A study found that Obama’s Secure Communities program, which deported nearly half a million undocumented immigrants, not only pushed those immigrants out of the workforce but also reduced the employment and hourly wages of U.S.-born people. Scaling their findings, the researchers estimated that for every million illegal workers deported, 88,000 native-born jobs would be lost.

An analysis published last month by the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics reached similar conclusions. Researchers found that a mass deportation of just 1.3 million undocumented immigrants would lower GDP and reduce U.S. employment by 0.8% by 2028. A major mass deportation of over 8 million immigrants would have a larger effect, reducing employment to 5.1% below the current baseline.

Undocumented immigrants also paid $59.4 billion in federal taxes and $37.3 billion in state and local taxes, according to a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. More than a third of that went to Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment insurance.

Over 4 million families could be separated

A mass deportation would not only reduce citizens’ jobs, but also impact family members who are citizens. According to the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 4.1 million mixed-status families in the United States. Approximately 4.4 million children born in the United States live with an undocumented parent.

Children whose parents are deported “often drop out of school and experience trauma, mental health and behavioral problems,” said Andrews, a researcher at UC San Diego. “Spouses often have to deal not only with the incredible emotional costs of deporting their partner, but also the economic costs of having to move or take another job.”

And the immigrants facing deportation “end up extremely disoriented and in existential limbo,” Andrews said.

“The economic costs will be extremely high, but the social, emotional and community costs will also be extraordinarily high,” she added.