Well, he didn’t get it done during his first term for various reasons. This time, there won’t be any adults in the room or any pushback. It’s going to be wildly costly to round people up and deport them. Cynically (but not unrealistically), I wonder how long before they decide that rounding them up and simply exterminating them is more cost-effective than deporting them.

For Trump’s part, he said on NBC News on November 7, 2024⁴, that his administration would have “no choice” but to carry this out. He went on to say “there is no price tag.” So, he doesn’t care how expensive it will be.

Acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner said back in July (2024) that mass deportation would be a huge financial and logistical challenge⁵. As for how it would be carried out, Trump has told his crowds, and told Time Magazine in April 2024⁶, that he would use local law enforcement as well as potentially that National Guard and active duty military.

The cost isn’t deterring Trump’s team. From Linked article 5: “Trump comes back in January,” Tom Homan said, “I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.”

In a statement, Trump campaign Trump national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “A majority of Americans want mass deportations for illegal immigrants. […] On Day One back in the White House, President Trump will begin the largest criminal deportation operation of illegal immigrants and restore the rule of law.”

The minute Trump won, his advisors started planning logistics:

“As a first step, Trump’s advisers are discussing issuing a national emergency declaration at the border on his first day in office, which his team thinks would allow him to move money from the Pentagon to pay for wall construction and to assist with immigrant detention and deportation. But the legality of such a move is unclear. A national emergency, Trump’s advisers think, also would unlock the ability to use military bases for immigrant detention and military planes to help carry out deportations.” [Source]⁷.

So, will the military carry out Trump’s orders, lawful or not? That remains to be seen, but:

“General John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff in his first term, told journalists during the campaign that Trump had repeatedly mused that he hankered after having military commanders that were personally loyal to him in the manner German generals showed Adolf Hitler.

Rachel VanLandingham, a former US air force attorney, said dangers of the military being used to suppress internal opposition were high.

“They will follow President Trump’s orders, particularly because the president can lawfully order domestic use of the military in a wide variety of situations,” she told the Post.

“There is huge risk in disobeying a president’s order, and seemingly little risk in obeying it.” [Source]⁸.

For the military to do this, they’d be defying the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the Army (and later extended to include the Air Force) from acting as domestic law enforcement. It’s also just as likely that this would look a lot like Eisenhower’s 1954 Operation Wetback, which used border patrol and local law enforcement to carry out mass raids and deportations. Operation Wetback resulted in human rights abuses and was ultimately halted. Needless to say, if you see Posse Comitatus overturned, you’ll know what to expect.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the “majority” of Americans want mass deportations, but this is not true. Edison Research exit polls showed 39% of voters said most immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be deported while 56% said they should be allowed to apply for legal status. [Source]⁹