The first problem is the expense. At an average cost of $12,213 for each, according to ICE, 2 million deportations would add up to more than $24.4 billion over four years. That includes all ICE costs necessary to identify, arrest, detain, process and remove those immigrants. It doesn’t include personnel salaries.
That’s more than the entire current budget for ICE and Customs and Border Protection (which deals with border security), which amounted to $19.4 billion in 2016.
Each of those agencies have responsibilities that stretch far beyond catching and deporting undocumented immigrants. There would be an additional cost to hire more federal immigration agents, and those agents would need training, office space, equipment and cars — which would require even more spending.
And then there’s the cost and hassle of sending detainees through the overburdened immigration courts, which already face a backlog of more than 526,000 cases.
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