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These agreements have been controversial, with critics saying they lead to racial profiling and undermine trust between police and immigrant communities. Critics also say that forcing local police to enforce immigration laws diverts resources from their primary duty of keeping communities safe.
“It’s a pretty heavy lift to try to expand 287(g) agreements,” says Meissner. “We’ve been trying to do that for a long time and the number of 287(g) agreements has been relatively stable for a while now.”
Even if the Trump administration were able to overcome these hurdles, the next step — detention — poses another significant challenge.
ICE currently has approximately 40,000 beds in detention centres across the country, according to the agency. But if the administration truly wanted to deport millions of unauthorised immigrants, it would need many more beds.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, there are about 400,000 people in the US without permanent legal status who have been ordered removed or have pending cases. If ICE wanted to detain all of them, it would need about 300,000 beds.
But Meissner says that the agency is “in no way near” that capacity. “They have always been at the limit of what they can do,” she says. “They are not going to be able to ramp that up very quickly.”
ICE has already taken steps to increase its capacity, including opening new detention centres and expanding existing ones. But the agency has faced opposition from local communities concerned about the impact of having a detention centre in their area.
Another option for detention is to use private prisons. The Trump administration has already taken steps to expand the use of private prisons for immigration detention. In 2019, the administration announced that it would no longer require detention centres to meet certain standards for the treatment of detainees.
“The private prison companies have been very aggressive in increasing their capacity,” says Meissner. “But there are limitations to how fast they can expand and how much they can expand.”
Even if the administration were able to overcome the challenges of identification, apprehension and detention, the final step — expulsion — poses yet another hurdle.
According to ICE, the agency removed 267,258 people in fiscal year 2019. But many of those removals were of people who voluntarily left the country or were deported through expedited removal procedures.
“There’s a lot of complexity to the removal process,” says Bier. “It’s not just a matter of putting someone on a plane and sending them back to their home country. There’s a lot of paperwork involved, there’s a lot of legal process involved.”
The Trump administration has also faced legal challenges to its deportation policies. In 2018, a federal judge in California ordered the administration to stop separating families at the border and to reunite families that had been separated. And in 2019, a federal judge in New York blocked the administration from implementing a policy that would have denied asylum to migrants who crossed the border illegally.
“The judicial system is a key check on executive power,” says Guttentag. “The Trump administration has faced significant legal setbacks in its efforts to dramatically expand immigration enforcement.”
Despite these challenges, the Trump administration has continued to push forward with its deportation plans. In a speech at the White House last week, Trump said that he was “very proud” of the administration’s record on immigration enforcement and that he would continue to “defend the rule of law.”
“We are removing these illegal immigrants, gang members, drug dealers, criminals, and killers from our communities,” Trump said. “We are enforcing the laws of the United States.”
But experts say that the administration’s goal of mass deportation is likely to remain out of reach.
“They’re not going to be able to achieve the goal that they set out,” says Bier. “It’s just not feasible.”
The backlog in immigration courts is already substantial, with more than 1.3 million cases pending as of 2023, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The average wait time for a case to be completed is 1,500 days, or more than four years.
“There is a significant gap between the number of cases pending and the resources to handle them,” says Yale-Loehr. “Even if the administration were to add more judges, it’s going to take a long time to get through that backlog.”
Trump has proposed adding more than 500 new immigration judges, but the process of hiring and training them is lengthy. In the meantime, the administration would have to rely on the existing judges, who are already overworked, to process the increased number of cases resulting from the heightened enforcement efforts.
“The administration’s plan to deport millions of people would overwhelm the already overburdened immigration court system,” says Yale-Loehr. “It’s going to be a logistical nightmare.”
Overall, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement strategy faces numerous logistical challenges, from detention capacity to court backlogs. As the administration moves forward with its plans, it will need to address these challenges in order to effectively carry out its immigration policies.
Los tribunales han acumulado un retraso de 656,000 casos pendientes en el año fiscal 2017 a 3.6 millones al final del año fiscal 2024, según MPI.
Las ciudades santuario van a obtener exactamente lo que no quieren: más agentes en las comunidades, más personas arrestadas, más arrestos colaterales.
Trump está buscando evitar por completo los tribunales de inmigración. El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional emitió el martes una nueva regla que amplió el alcance de la “remoción acelerada”, bajo la cual los inmigrantes indocumentados que no pueden demostrar que han estado en el país por más de dos años son deportados sin revisión judicial. Trump persiguió una medida similar durante su primer mandato.
La práctica anteriormente se aplicaba a individuos capturados dentro de aproximadamente 115 millas de las fronteras internacionales del país. Ahora, puede ser utilizada en todo Estados Unidos.
“El efecto de este cambio será mejorar la seguridad nacional y la seguridad pública, al tiempo que se reducen los costos del gobierno, al facilitar determinaciones de inmigración rápidas”, dijo el DHS.
La administración Trump también podría enfrentar oposición de algunos de los países a los que quiere deportar a los migrantes. Colombia anunció el domingo que había rechazado la entrada de vuelos militares estadounidenses que transportaban migrantes, diciendo que los individuos debían ser transportados en aviones civiles y tratados con “dignidad y respeto”.
Trump respondió inmediatamente imponiendo aranceles del 25 por ciento a las importaciones de Colombia, que luego se pausaron después de que Bogotá acordara permitir la entrada de los vuelos militares.
La avalancha de políticas de inmigración de Trump se enfrentará a una ola de desafíos legales, con algunos estados demócratas y grupos de derechos civiles demandando a su administración.
La ACLU y otros grupos presentaron una demanda el miércoles para bloquear la regla del DHS que amplía la “remoción acelerada”.
“La administración Trump quiere usar esta política ilegal para alimentar su agenda de deportación masiva y dividir comunidades”, dijo Anand Balakrishnan, abogado de la ACLU que lidera el caso, en un comunicado. “Expandir la remoción acelerada le daría a Trump un código de trucos para evadir el debido proceso y la constitución.” La Casa Blanca no respondió de inmediato a una solicitud de comentario.
Los fiscales generales estatales demócratas y grupos de derechos civiles también han presentado varias demandas para invalidar la nueva orden ejecutiva de Trump que prohíbe la ciudadanía por nacimiento, alegando que viola la enmienda 14 de la constitución, que dice que todas las “personas nacidas o naturalizadas en los Estados Unidos… son ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos”. Esta prohibición ya ha sido detenida temporalmente por un juez federal de EE. UU. La Casa Blanca dijo que apelaría.
Homan dijo el domingo que su idea de éxito no necesariamente incluye deportar a todos los inmigrantes no autorizados en EE. UU., en lo que parecía ser un intento de gestionar las expectativas. “Estoy siendo realista”, dijo a ABC. “Podemos hacer lo que podamos con el dinero que tenemos”.
Pero Homan también ha insistido en que la administración acelerará los arrestos y detenciones, incluso si hay oposición política. Y está dispuesto a ejercer una fuerte presión sobre los políticos locales que intenten obstaculizar esos esfuerzos.
“Las ciudades santuario van a obtener exactamente lo que no quieren: más agentes en las comunidades, más personas arrestadas, más arrestos colaterales”, dijo a Fox News el miércoles. “¿Ese es el juego que quieren jugar? Pues que así sea.”
Reportaje adicional de Alex Rogers en Washington
Cartografía de Cleve Jones