The (impossible) logistics of mass deportation
By Keith on Nov 23, 2016
Could the president-elect actually deport millions of people? Legally, yes. Logistically and politically, the answer is unclear.
Right now, according to the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), immigration courts throughout the United States have approximately 520,000 active cases in “removal” proceedings, the official name for deportation. The average removal proceeding takes 571 days to process. But that number is misleading. In practice, cases tend to move much more quickly if the immigrant does not contest removal and agrees to leave. In contrast, cases tend to endure for several years if the immigrant contests removal. What would happen if the president-elect added millions of new cases to this system? In a word: paralysis.
The president-elect has promised to remove “criminals,” sometimes citing a figure of 2 or 3 million persons. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 1.9 million immigrants are removable because they have committed crimes. According to the Migration Policy Institute, only 820,000 of this number are immigrants without lawful status; the other 1.1 million already have green cards. It is not clear if the president-elect wants to deport only the 820,000 or the 1.9 million. But even using the lower figure, the docket in immigration courts would balloon to 1.3 million, or 2.5 times what it takes now. That would push the average case processing time to 1428 days (just shy of 4 years). If the president-elect tried to deport 1.9 million persons, the average case processing time would jump to 2657 days (or 7.2 years). And it bears repeating that that figure is for the average processing time, not the processing time in a contested matter. The delays in a contested case would far outlive the term of any president.
One strategy the president-elect could use would be an increase in funding. But the president-elect has promised to institute a hiring freeze in the federal government. Without additional immigration judges, there would be no way to speed this process up. Indeed, even at the current staffing level, the immigration court backlog is estimated to increase to 1 million by 2022. The combination of a steady staffing level plus a deluge of new cases would completely overwhelm the court. Another strategy that some fear is that the president-elect would just skip the immigration court system altogether and simply deport people. Such a move would fly in the face of due process and basic notions of justice and fairness. Politically, such a move would be suicide.
In sum, it is unclear what the president-elect will do. But what is clear is that his campaign promises are now meeting the harsh reality of actual government. The election result will still harm millions of immigrant families, but the worst case scenario of rapid mass deportation is unlikely both logistically and politically.