If a US administration was able to legally move ahead with plans for mass deportations, authorities would still have to contend with enormous logistical challenges.
During the Biden administration, deportation efforts have focused on migrants recently detained at the border. Migrants deported from further inland in the US, from areas not located near the border, are, overwhelmingly, those with criminal histories or deemed national security threats.
Controversial raids on worksites that were carried out during the Trump administration were suspended in 2021.
Deportations of people arrested in the US interior – as opposed to those at the border – have hovered at below 100,000 for a decade, after peaking at over 230,000 during the early years of the Obama administration.
“To raise that, in a single year, up to a million would require a massive infusion of resources that likely don’t exist,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told the BBC.
For one, experts are doubtful that Ice’s 20,000 agents and support personnel would be enough to find and track down even a fraction of the figures being touted by the Trump campaign.
Mr Reichlin-Melnick added that the deportation process is long and complicated and only begins with the identification and arrest of an undocumented migrant.
After that, detainees would need to be housed or placed on an “alternative to detention” programme before they are brought before an immigration judge, in a system with a years-long backlog.
Only then are detainees removed from the US, a process that requires diplomatic co-operation from the receiving country.
“In each of those areas, Ice simply does not have the capacity to process millions of people,” Mr Reichlin-Melnick said.
Trump has said he would involve the National Guard or other US military forces to help with deportations.
Historically, the US military’s role in immigration matters has been limited to support functions at the US-Mexico border.
Aside from the use of the military and “using local law enforcement”, Trump has offered few specifics on how such a mass deportation plan could be carried out.
In an interview with Time magazine earlier this year, the former president said only that he would “not rule out” building new migrant detention facilities, and that he would move to give police immunity from prosecution from “the liberal groups or the progressive groups”.
He added that there could also be incentives for state and local police departments to participate, and that those who do not “won’t partake in the riches”.
“We have to do this,” he said. “This is not a sustainable problem for our country.”
Eric Ruark, the director of research at NumbersUSA – an organisation that advocates for tighter immigration controls – said that any deportation programme from the interior would only be effective if coupled with increased border enforcement.
“That has to be the priority. You’re going to make very little progress in the interior if that’s not the case,” he said. “That’s what keeps people showing up.”
Additionally, Mr Ruark said that a crackdown on companies that hire undocumented migrants would also be necessary.
“They’re coming for jobs,” he said. “And they’re getting those jobs because interior enforcement has basically been dismantled.”
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