An immigration attorney warns that Donald Trump's plan for mass deportation "will be profoundly awful" for U.S. children, as millions of kids currently live with at least one undocumented parent.
Trump has vowed to conduct the "largest deportation operation in U.S. history," however some experts are worried about the children who are legally living in the country.
"Mass deportations will be profoundly harmful to U.S. citizen children," Andrew Craycroft, staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, told The Guardian.
More than 4 million children in the United States have at least one undocumented parent, and more than 17 million children born in the U.S. have at least one immigrant parent, according to data reviewed by The Guardian.
The president-elect previously claimed that he would declare a national emergency and use the military to carry out these deportations, however previous rulings would likely bar Trump from doing so, as reported by the Miami Herald.
The feasibility of Trump's plan has also been brought into question by experts due to the millions of people the plan would target, as well as the cost. A study by the American Immigration Council claimed that just deporting just 1 million of the 11 million people living unlawfully in the U.S. could cost $7 billion.
However, even if the plan does not come to full fruition, experts claim it still presents a danger for families. "These are millions of US citizen children who were born here, who have grown up going to your elementary schools and playing on your little league baseball teams, who are facing a very real danger of losing their parents," Kelly Albinak Kribs, co-director of the Technical Assistance Program at the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, told The Guardian.
Trump also previously claimed that he would end birthright citizenship as a way to target the children of "illegal immigrants." However, as birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution, experts said he would need a constitutional amendment to change this, as reported by Vox.
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