2 weeks Ago
SAN DIEGO — Former President Donald Trump has promised to conduct the largest mass deportation in American history if he's elected, and a new report puts a price tag on that promise. The American Immigration Council , a non-profit based in Washington D.C.
that advocates for immigrants, estimates the cost of mass deportation would be about $88 billion dollars a year, and nearly $1 trillion dollars over a decade. It analyzed federal budget documents, government reports, inspector general investigations and did the economic analysis to come up with this price tag. "If anything, this is a conservative estimate," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
"That's because holding a million people in detention centers, as we have seen some people call for, is an enormously expensive operation." He said right now across the United States, there are about 1.9 people held in custody on any given day.
"If you want to detain a million immigrants a year that means you have to build up new capacity in the United States, it would be about 50-60 percent higher than the current system. We are a country that already locks up a lot of people if you want to lock up more people and more immigrants you're looking at pretty enormous costs." However, some argue this is a safety issue, a security threat.
60 Minutes sat down with Tom Homan, the former ICE Director who served during former President Trump's term in office. "It's not OK to enter a country illegally, which is a crime. That's what drives illegal immigration, when there's no consequences.
The Biden-Harris administration has proven this, You can get to the border, turn yourselves in, get released within 24 hours," Homan told reporter Cecilia Vega. "It's not gonna be-- a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It's not gonna be building concentration camps.
I've read it all. It's ridiculous," he added. "They'll be targeted arrests.
We'll know who we're going to arrest, where we're most likely to find 'em based on numerous inve-- you know, investigative processes," he said. To read the American Immigration Council's full analysis, click here ..
