Former president Donald Trump is reportedly contemplating halting federal grants to police departments that decline to participate in his mass deportation plan, one of his most touted initiatives should he win the White House. Sources close to the Trump campaign told NBC News that the strategy seeks to pressure law enforcement agencies in blue states to comply.
Trump has repeatedly promised to conduct the mentioned mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, particularly targeting those with criminal records or final orders of deportation. ICE officials estimate that nearly 1.5 million immigrants in the U.S. have final deportation orders, including over 430,000 with criminal records.
But such a plan would face significant logistical, legal, and political obstacles. Ron Vitiello, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump's first term, recalled the administration's frustrations with similar deportation efforts that were hindered by legal battles with Democratic-controlled jurisdictions.
Sanctuary cities, such as Chicago and New York, and states like California have policies that prevent them from notifying ICE when they encounter undocumented immigrants, releasing them back to the community rather than being handed over to ICE.
Moreover, the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration research group, estimates that the cost of arresting and deporting as many as 1.9 million undocumented immigrants would exceed ICE's annual budget by nearly ten times.
So, to encourage cooperation among local law enforcement, Trump campaign plans to cut off access to federal Justice Department grants. The Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program is the primary source of federal funding for state and local law enforcement, distributing over $250 million annually.
During Trump's presidency, several states, including New York, sued the administration after it withheld Byrne JAG grants from sanctuary cities. Although an appeals court sided with the Trump administration, the case reached the Supreme Court just as Joe Biden took office and reinstated the grant program for these jurisdictions.
Vitiello said a second Trump administration would create additional funding opportunities for police departments that participate in mass deportations. "I could see, under the administration, an incentivization."
On a large scale, it's estimated that Trump's campaign promise could affect up to 11 million people living in the country without legal status. No administration has attempted a deportation operation of this size. If executed, the scale of Trump's plan would far exceed past administrations, including his own, which deported 1.5 million people over four years.
Nearly 5 million American families may face severe disruption under a proposed 2024 mass deportation program, according to a recent report from the Center for Migration Studies (CMS). The report warns that such a large-scale deportation effort could break up families, causing widespread social and economic consequences. The analysis shows that 5.8 million U.S. households include at least one undocumented resident. Of these households, 4.7 million are "mixed-status", where U.S. citizens or legal residents live alongside undocumented individuals.
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