WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on conducting the largest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history. But some say the time, cost and manpower needed to locate, identify and actually deport people eligible for removal creates a daunting task. 

What You Need To Know

  • President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants faces logistical hurdles, including the time, cost, and sheer manpower required to locate and arrest individuals

  • Experts highlight that each ICE arrest demands significant resources, with an estimated 300 to 400 man-hours to find and arrest the individual 

  • Many undocumented immigrants come from "recalcitrant countries," which have limited or no diplomatic relations with Washington, and experts say it would require the incoming administration to apply diplomatic pressure to get countries to accept their nationals

Trump is vowing to follow through on his promise, no matter the cost. Muzzaffar Chisti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, says it will not be easy. 

“Locating them, I think, is the first real impediment,” Chishti told Spectrum News. “You have to go from house to house, or you have to go to workplace raids, and then in either place, you need either the permission of the people to enter the space or you need a warrant.”

It is estimated that at least 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the country. There are about 1.6 million undocumented immigrants in Texas alone. Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan says the new administration will prioritize those who are a public safety threat and those who already have what’s called a final order of removal. That means a judge has determined that person does not have a legal basis to stay in the U.S. There already are 1.3 million people in the U.S. named in final orders of removal. We asked immigration experts why it has been difficult to remove them.

“It’s easier, obviously, to go after people whose addresses the government knows, but the impediment comes mostly for lack of resources and for the cooperation of the agencies of the governments to accept them,” Chishti said. 

Jason Houser worked at the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama and Biden administrations. Houser, a former chief of staff at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said conducting investigations to find individuals who don’t have criminal records is “time intensive.” He describes the sheer manpower it takes just to find those eligible for removal. 

“My rule of thumb is, for every sort of at-large on the street ICE arrests, it takes about 300 to 400 man hours to find that individual and to do the arrest itself. After you find a pattern of life and you find someone, it will take eight to 10 deportation officers to go out and do that arrest,” Houser said. “ICE has 6,000 deportation officers, so you can see, sort of just the numbers of research, the amount of resources that would take to get to a million removals.”

Experts say another challenge is that many undocumented immigrants come from what the U.S. calls “recalcitrant” countries – nations that have limited or no diplomatic relations with Washington.

“They’re from countries in Asia or Venezuela or Cuba or in Africa that those countries won’t accept individuals back. That is one of the biggest limiting factors,” Houser said. 

Chisti says Trump and his administration will need to pressure some countries to take back their citizens who entered the U.S. illegally. 

“We can sanction those countries by not allowing, you know, senior officials of those countries to get a visa to enter the U.S. That’s typically what we do. I think it’s quite likely that the Trump administration could impose tariffs on those countries,” he said.