Ahead of Election Day 2024, Donald Trump never really went into a lot of detail about his governing vision or platform, but the Republican was relatively consistent on one priority: He vowed to pursue a policy of mass deportations — apparently by way of militarized deportations and mass detention camps.
Indeed, Trump made little effort to deny the scope and scale of his right-wing deportation plans.
Now that he’s prevailed, the president-elect will have to prepare to implement those plans, though he doesn’t appear to have given the details much thought. NBC News report:
President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News on Thursday that one of his first priorities upon taking office in January would be to make the border ‘strong and powerful.’ When questioned about his campaign promise of mass deportations, Trump said his administration would have ‘no choice’ but to carry them out.
This is exactly what one would expect him to say. Trump said before the election that he’d have “no choice” but to pursue mass deportations, so it stands to reason that he’d repeat the line now — despite the fact that he most certainly does have a choice, and he’s almost certainly making the wrong one.
But when NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked about the cost of his plan, the president-elect replied, “It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
There are a couple of ways to interpret the “there is no price tag” line. It’s possible, for example, that Trump was suggesting that he doesn’t much care how much a mass deportation initiative costs because he believes it’ll be worth it, no matter the price. His answer, in effect, might’ve been a “no cost is too high” position.
It’s also possible, however, that the Republican believes that his policy will be free. He’ll just direct officials to round up millions of people, and all of this can be done by way of existing federal expenditures.
If that is what Trump is thinking, now seems like a good time to remind him that there is, in reality, a price tag. Politico reported, in response to the NBC News interview, “There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., according to Department of Homeland Security estimates from 2022, the most recent year the data is available — though Trump has maintained, without evidence, that the real number is over double that. Deportation at that scale would cost at least $315 billion, according to a report out last month by the American Immigration Council.” It’s quite likely that Trump would argue that $315 billion for a mass deportation process — a process he’s said might be “nasty” and “bloody” — is money well spent. Whether that’s a consensus view remains to be seen.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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