(ConservativeSense.com) – Former President Donald Trump is amping up his previous promises to mass deport illegal immigrants from the US by vowing to carry out the “largest” such effort in the country’s history if he returns to the White House.
On Tuesday, April 30, TIME published an exclusive interview with Trump and wrote that an operation at the scale described by the former president “would rely mostly on the National Guard,” who would have to “round up and remove” illegal aliens nationwide. The plan would also leverage local law enforcement and some military to carry out the round-ups when the National Guard is unable to.
When the interviewer asks Trump if his plan means overriding the Posse Comitatus Act, the former president seemed “unmoved” by the statute’s weight. The act, dating back to 1878, prohibits presidents from using the military as a form of law enforcement against civilians.
Exactly how this agenda will be carried out remains unclear, and the Trump campaign hasn’t specified yet what resources would be necessary to deport almost 20 million people, which is the estimated amount of illegal aliens who currently live in the US according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A former acting ICE director under Trump, Tom Homan, said the agency’s systems are “good at identifying people” but that the resources required to deport everyone identified as illegal are another question, as well as the availability of those resources to get the job done. Homan said much of that would be determined by Congress, noting that the plan would require “officers,” “detention beds,” and “transportation contracts” to deal with all of the outgoing flights and buses to relocate millions of people.
Homan said Trump should “prioritize criminals” and people who pose a national security threat “first” because they pose the most danger, but that no one should be “off the table” if they entered the US illegally.
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