- [Reporter] $315 billion. That's one staggering cost estimate for Donald Trump's signature campaign promise. - The largest domestic deportation operation in American history.
- [Reporter] More conservative estimates are still enormous. One group puts it at $162 billion. That's more than the government spend on most federal agencies in fiscal year 2024.
We'll explain why an operation of this scale could require hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of a decade. - Is it your plan to deport everyone who is here illegally over the next four years? - Well, I think you have to do it, and it's a very tough thing to do.
- [Reporter] That means roughly 13 million immigrants who entered the country illegally are at risk of deportation, about 4% of the US population. To put that into perspective, the entire US prison and jail population in 2022 was around 1. 9 million people.
- Scale is difficult for the government to carry out. - [Reporter] Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a liberal immigration group. - Trump would have to do more than quadruple current ICE removals of people arrested in the interior just to hit the levels that we've seen previously under Obama.
- I think that you take a sequential approach to it. You start with what's achievable. Let's start with 1 million.
- [Reporter] The details of the plan are still being worked out. But let's say Trump does decide to deport 1 million people a year. That could still cost about $88 billion annually and take 11 years according to one estimate.
And that's assuming 20% of people would leave on their own. - Yes, it's expensive, but the trade-offs, I think, are well worth it. - [Reporter] Ron Vitiello led the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency known as ICE for a year in Trump's first term.
- Right now, the government is underfunded for its ability to detain people. To be able to accomplish this and the border mission simultaneously will require a reallocation, if not an infusion for resources. - [Reporter] Other immigration experts say the actual cost of Trump's mass deportation plan will be much lower than the American Immigration Council's estimate of $315 billion.
- A more robust enforcement like the administration is contemplating may create significant economies of scale. - [Reporter] Steven Camarota is the Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies. A group favoring immigration restrictions that helped staff Trump's first term.
- Once you start doing it and you get an infrastructure in place, then it might be a lot cheaper. - [Reporter] Deportation starts with arrest. - They'll be targeted arrest.
We'll know who we're going to rest, where we're most likely to find 'em based on numerous investigative processes. - We're starting with the criminals and we gotta do it. And then, we're starting with others.
- [Reporter] Trump says Dramers or people who entered the US illegally as children might be an exception. To make arrests, ICE officers would either identify someone who's already in a jail or prison or go to a person's home. - [Officer] Police.
Come to the door. - The majority of undocumented immigrants are not in law enforcement custody. Most of them have never committed any offenses.
- [Reporter] Arresting people out in the community, known as at-large arrests isn't a common tactic for ICE. Vitiello says it's more logistically complicated and more expensive, but it's at the center of the Trump administration's plan. - I'm not concerned that they won't be able to find 'em.
It's just a matter of time given the circumstances, given the availability of information, and given the resources in play. (car door thumps) - [Reporter] At-large arrests often require multiple federal agents and take several days because ICE officers don't generally have warrants. - Immigration violations are not criminal, which means that a judicial warrant to arrest them would not have probable cause.
They might have to wait hours for the person to leave their house. They might have to stake out a work site. - [Reporter] To carry out arrests at this scale, the American Immigration Council estimates ICE would need to hire over 30,000 new law enforcement agents and staff, making it the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government.
Vitiello says this number is overstated and that state and local law enforcement could be directed via task forces to help with at-large arrests, something they already do. - Having that referral system having state and locals help, ICE officers do their job. Better to have it than not, but not definitive in whether they do the work or not.
- [Reporter] Then, there's detention. The most expensive part of the whole process. It costs around $200 a day to hold someone in ICE custody.
Congress has provided enough funding for at least 41,500 detention beds in fiscal year 2025. But that's not nearly enough to detain 1 million people a year. According to the American Immigration Council, ICE would need to construct 216 soft-sided facilities every year for 11 years.
Soft-sided facilities are temporary tent-like structures that have typically been used near the border. Anyone not physically detained would be placed on electronic surveillance, which costs approximately $4 per person per day. Private contractors involved in every stage of the detention process could drive up prices even more.
- Contractors drive people in between ICE detention centers or drive the vans after somebody's arrested. - [Reporter] Detaining children would also make this process more expensive. - I don't wanna be breaking up families, so the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together, and you have to send them all back.
- Family detention is the most expensive kind of detention because the US government is required to give people minimum standards, and those children need to have child welfare professionals on site. They need to have pediatricians on site. There needs to be a provision for them to get schooling if they are going to be held for months or potentially years at a time.
- [Reporter] Vitiello says one way the government could reduce costs is by repurposing existing detention centers like Guantanamo Bay. - A third country like a Panama, potentially Mexico could agree to hold third country nationals so that their due process could be adjudicated, thereby lowering the costs and kind of sending a message down the pipeline that people are not gonna be released into the United States to await those adjudications. That alone will reduce the number of individuals trying to cross the border illegally.
- [Reporter] Camarota says there are over a million immigrants who could be detained at a much lower cost. - There are people with a final order of removal that we just never made leave. Those individuals shouldn't have to be held long.
We can get them out very quickly. - [Reporter] After detention comes legal processing, which immigration law experts say is the biggest bottleneck in the mass deportation process. An additional 10.
6 million cases would require nearly 2,000 more immigration judges and over 1,100 more courtrooms. - There is not only a cost in the immigration court side, but there's also a cost in the ICE side in getting these new prosecutors online. You need support staff for the judges, judicial law clerk, secretaries.
- [Reporter] Staffing on both sides leads each case to cost over $2,500. To set up new courtrooms quickly, the government would likely construct tent courts, like those built in 2019 to implement the migrant protection protocols. This was when immigrants living in the US illegally were returned to Mexico to wait for the duration of their court proceedings.
They went to tent courts near the border to virtually appear in front of judges. - You could do those hearings much faster, logistically get more judges and more hearings heard in a day. - As with finding new efficiencies in detention space, that is another thing that has its limits.
- [Reporter] Tent style courtrooms in Laredo, Texas cost about $16 million to build and $143 million annually to operate. Once a person receives a final removal order, they have to either report for deportation at a later date or wait in detention until then. - At that point, the US government has to actually arrange the removal.
That would involve putting them on a bus and sending them to Mexico. But if they're from any other country other than Canada, that means putting them on a plane and flying them to their ultimate destination. - An operation of this scale could require over 6,000 removal flights per year.
For comparison, ICE had around 1,200 removal flights in fiscal year 2023. The average ICE removal flight costs about $17,000 per hour. This number could go up if private contractors who provide ICE with planes and pilots raise their prices.
- But there are other assets, right? ICE has a number of its own aircraft that are already in service today. The Justice Department, the Marshall Service has their own transportation aircraft.
The scale up need could come from the military. - [Reporter] Trump told NBC News in November that there is no price tag for his plan. Camarota says the cost will likely be spread out over several years because it would be impractical to deport even 1 million people a year.
Let alone all 13 million in a single onetime operation. - In this case, it's probably hyperbole. What I think he's trying to do is tell everyone, "When I take over, the immigration law is gonna be back in business.
" And I think it's gonna have a big effect, and then it's gonna be up to the public to judge whether he kept his word. - [Reporter] But getting enough funding from Congress will be crucial for an operation of this magnitude. Senate Republicans have said that passing a border funding bill will be the top priority next year.
- Border security, more bed spaces so you don't have to release people that shouldn't be released. And more ICE agents to deport people who represent a threat to our country and shouldn't be here to begin with. - [Reporter] Republicans control both chambers of Congress next term, but it's a narrow majority, making spending on this scale no guarantee.
- To my Democratic friends. I think if you resist rational deportation policy, you do so at your own peril.
