EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) — Lawmakers at all levels of government have started to either push back or pitch in on President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportation once he takes office.
The latest show of support came from the state of Texas, where the head of the Land Commission offered up a recently purchased border ranch so the incoming Trump administration could build “deportation facilities.
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In North Carolina, Republicans in the Legislature overrode their Democratic governor’s veto of legislation that directs local sheriffs to comply with requests from federal immigration agents to detain certain inmates.
Trump also faces opposition from state and local leaders, as well as countless immigrant advocacy groups.
Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said mass deportations could harm families in her state, adding that they are “worried about threats from the Trump administration.”
Instead, Hobbs said she was willing to work with Trump on border security issues like stopping fentanyl trafficking.
In neighboring California, the Los Angeles City Council approved a so-called “sanctuary city” ordinance that forbids using city resources from for immigration enforcement and bars city departments from sharing with federal authorities people’s immigration status.
The scope of Trump’s mass deportations is unknown. Still, experts tell Border Report his proposed crackdown on illegal immigration will require scrutinizing asylum claims, increasing cooperation with local law enforcement and expanding the role of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Furthermore, policy experts have said that Trump’s first actions will be at the southern border —not in the interior of the country. That could include reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols program unofficially known as “Remain in Mexico,” which forced asylum-seekers back into Mexican border cities while their cases played out in U.S. courts.
Migrant advocates crusaded against MPP, which was implemented by the Trump administration in 2018. They alleged human rights violations and argued that it was plagued with logistical problems, saying migrant families had to wait in crime-ridden cities where they often fell prey to gangs and cartels and any criminal. During MPP’s first two years, Human Rights First says it tracked at least 1,544 publicly documented cases of rape, kidnapping, assault, and other crimes committed against people in the program.
For months and even years, hundreds of people, including families with young children, lived out in the elements in camps along the border, though a small few were able to afford apartments or hotels. President Joe Biden ended MPP about two months after taking office.
Trump might hope that Mexico again agrees to take in those asylum-seeking migrants and continues its own crackdown on migration by getting migrants off of northbound freight trains and returning those without travel documents to the Guatemalan border.
As for the deportation of millions, Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, tells the AP, “There’s no way you could do it,” adding that it would be done one step at a time instead of all at once.
“The first thing you have to do is seal the border and then you can address the interior,” he said.
Deportations themselves vary. At the border, for example, migrants who enter the U.S. illegally can be sent back just as easily under expedited removals.
But conducting “mass deportations” from the country’s interior will be complicated and likely won’t be as eventful as voters might have imagined.
Victor M. Manjarrez Jr., a former U.S. Border Patrol chief in El Paso and Tucson, Arizona, told Border Report that the personnel, money and facilities are lacking, meaning deportations will be “very targeted, very focused.”
He explains that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and its Enforcement Removal Operations officers will carry out deportations and not the U.S. Border Patrol.
However, he says border agents will eventually help ERO, especially when migrant encounters slow down, and they can be reassigned. ERO is also expected to continue getting help from the U.S. Marshals Service, which transports migrants inside the country.
The president-elect’s planned immigration crackdown is wide-ranging. He also plans to have friendly governors deploy their state’s National Guard troops to states that refuse to participate, and to use the Alien Enemies Act, a law from the late 1700s that allows the president to deport noncitizens from countries with which the U.S. is at war.
And just this week, Trump seemingly hinted at declaring an immigration national emergency to use military assets to support his immigration plan.
What remains unclear is if Trump will keep rules that the Biden administration implemented on June 4 that deny asylum to migrants who enter the U.S. illegally and require asylum-seekers to request an interview at a designated port of entry using the CBP One app.
According to a Department of Homeland Security issued Monday, the asylum restrictions have led to a more than 52% decrease in Border Patrol encounters. DHS also said that since that June 4 proclamation, through the end of October, DHS conducted more than 640 international repatriation flights to more than 155 countries, including China, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Egypt, Mauritania, Senegal, Uzbekistan, and India.
At the border, the number of migrants arrested for crossing illegally in October rose slightly from the previous month but remained among the lowest during the Biden administration.
U.S. Border Patrol agents encountered 56,530 migrants in October, the first month of Fiscal Year 2025. The arrests rose about 5% from 53,530 in September but fell more than 70% from 188,749 last October.
