(NewsNation) —President-elect Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportation could take up to 16 years to undertake under current legal backlogs.
Trump has pledged the largest domestic deportation in American history when he steps back into office in January, but the actual process to remove people may take more than a decade under Trump’s plan, according to Axios.
The U.S. immigration system’s backlog of 3.7 million court cases will take four years to resolve at the current pace, but under Trump’s plan, which aims for massive removal of the more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, that could increase to 16 years, the outlet reported.
Immigration courts closed 900,000 cases from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. At that pace, immigration courts wouldn’t clear all active cases until 2028, an Axios analysis of TRAC data found.
The legal process requires finding, detaining and then court-ordered removal, and a massive deportation effort will drown much progress.
Trump has not announced plans to increase immigration judges or alleviate the current legal process for removal, which could cause the cases to go into the noncriminal system, the outlet reported.
Trump likely would need new detention centers nationwide to hold people suspected of being in the U.S. without authorization, possibly for years.
Trump’s current process could cost taxpayers $150 billion to $350 billion, according to Axios.
Trump’s new border czar, Tim Homan, insists the initial primary focus will be criminals who pose a security threat, but that could easily widen, he said.
“If you’re in the country illegally, you’re in violation of law, so you’re not off the table,” Homan told NewsNation’s “CUOMO.”
