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Trump says he'll undertake the 'largest deportation' in U.S. history. Can he do that?

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Trump says he'll undertake the 'largest deportation' in U.S. history. Can he do that?

Former President Trump has promised that, if reelected, he will kick out millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Trump and his surrogates have offered sparse details for how he would carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history,” but have cemented the goal as a top priority. What is known: The strategy would rely on military troops, friendly state and local law enforcement, and wartime powers.

“No one’s off the table,” Tom Homan, Trump’s former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in July. “If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said the administration would start by deporting immigrants who have committed crimes.

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At a campaign rally earlier this month in Aurora, Colo., Trump said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 “to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.”

The ex-president went on to say that he would send “elite squads” of federal law enforcement officers to “hunt down, arrest and deport” every migrant gang member. Those who attempt to return to the U.S. would be served with 10-year prison sentences without parole, he said, adding that any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen or law enforcement officer would face the death penalty.

How many people would Trump go after?

It’s unclear.

In May, Trump told Time magazine he would target 15 million to 20 million people who he said are living illegally in the U.S. The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates the actual number to be about 11 million as of 2022. More than 2 million people have entered the country illegally since then.

“Let’s start with 1 million,” Vance told ABC News in August.

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During his entire presidency, from January 2017 to January 2021, Trump deported about 1.5 million immigrants, according to a Migration Policy Institute analysis of federal figures — far fewer than the 2 million to 3 million he speculated about deporting in a 2016 interview as president-elect. The Biden administration is on pace to match Trump’s deportation numbers.

What powers would Trump invoke to justify deportations?

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 allows the president to arrest, imprison or deport immigrants from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime. Congress passed the law as part of the Alien and Sedition Acts — four laws that tightened restrictions on foreign-born Americans and limited criticism of the government, when the country was on the brink of war with France.

The law has been used three times in American history: during the War of 1812 and World War I and after the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.

During WWI, federal authorities placed 6,300 “enemy aliens” — many from Germany — into internment camps.

By the end of WWII, more than 31,000 people from Japan, Germany and Italy, as well as some Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, had been interned at camps and military facilities — in addition to the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans who were forcibly relocated to the same camps and detained under different legal grounds, said Gabriel “Jack” Chin, a UC Davis professor who studies criminal and immigration law.

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Chin said he isn’t convinced that Trump would make the Alien Enemies Act the cornerstone of his immigration policy because the U.S. is not in a declared war with another nation.

“It would have to rest on an argument that random immigration — that is to say immigration based on individual decisions of individual people — is the equivalent of an invasion from a nation-state,” he said. “And that would have to be based on an idea that foreigners as a group are a nation.”

Trump has also said he would deploy National Guard troops under the orders of sympathetic governors.

“If I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military,” he told Time.

Federal law limits the involvement of military troops in civilian law enforcement.

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In 2018, Trump sent 5,800 active-duty troops to the southwestern border amid the arrival of a caravan of thousands of migrants from Central America. Initially the troops performed support work such as laying razor wire as a deterrent to crossing, but later the White House expanded their authority to allow them to use force and provide crowd control to protect border agents.

Last year, President Biden sent 1,500 Army and Marine Corps troops to fill critical “capability gaps” at the border as the administration lifted the Title 42 border expulsions policy that Trump had invoked to turn away asylum seekers and other would-be immigrants as the COVID-19 pandemic raged.

Trump has promised to go further during a second term by recalling thousands of troops from overseas to be stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border. He has also explored using troops to assist with deportations and confronting civil unrest.

Using the Alien Enemies Act, Trump could conduct rapid deportations without the typically required legal processes. He could also circumvent federal law to use military troops in a broader law enforcement capacity to carry out arrests and removals.

But speeding up the deportation process could come with catastrophic consequences, Chin said. Scores of U.S. citizens are already mistakenly deported.

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“If the point of this was a roundup, U.S. citizens would be rounded up,” he said.

Katherine Yon Ebright, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice, argued in an analysis of the law that courts would likely avoid opining on the presence or absence of an invasion, or whether the perpetrator of the alleged invasion is a foreign nation or government.

“The courts’ hesitance to weigh in on these questions heightens the risk that Trump will invoke the Alien Enemies Act despite its clear inapplicability,” she wrote. But she added that “courts may strike down an invocation of the Alien Enemies Act under modern due process and equal protection law, justiciable grounds for checking abusive presidential action.”

Tom Jawetz, deputy general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security from 2021 to 2022, said courts tend to give deference to the president for executive determinations. But he said this one could be difficult to uphold.

“There could be opportunities for legal attack,” he said. “It sounds like they would be stretching it beyond its capacity, beyond what the text [of the law] would allow.”

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Is it feasible?

Deporting millions of people would be expensive and logistically complex.

Former President Obama, who in 2013 oversaw the most deportations in a year when his administration kicked out 438,000 immigrants, relied on local police turning people over to federal immigration agents. Trump has said he would similarly rely on state and local law enforcement. But many state and local governments, including California, have since limited their cooperation with immigration agents.

Immigration courts are already overwhelmed, and more deportation cases would add to the backlog of 3.7 million cases. Lengthy delays in immigration court proceedings mean immigrants often wait years before their case is completed.

Among the rights afforded to immigrants is a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that prohibits them from being indefinitely detained if their country won’t accept them back. Countries including Venezuela and China have previously refused to cooperate with U.S. authorities on deportations.

How much would it cost?

It would cost at least $315 billion to deport the roughly 13 million people in the country illegally, according to an analysis by the American Immigration Council, a group that advocates for policies that welcome migrants. The deportation effort would require building hundreds of new detention facilities, as well as hiring hundreds of thousands of new immigration agents, judges and other staff.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s budget last year was about $9 billion. Significantly increasing its funding would require the backing of Congress — an uphill battle given current political divisions.

Jawetz said Trump could redirect funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Defense, like he did for construction of the border wall, and could also reassign personnel from other agencies to perform immigration enforcement tasks.

An analysis by CBS News found that it cost an estimated average of $19,599 to deport one person over the last five fiscal years after apprehension, detention, immigration court processes and transport out of the U.S. were taken into account. The average cost of repatriation only increases as more migrants arrive from distant countries such as Cameroon and China.

How are people preparing?

Mass deportation could rip apart deeply rooted families that include citizens and noncitizens, worsen labor shortages and lead to economic upset. Discussion of mass deportation alone would also sow fear in immigrant communities, as happened during Trump’s first term.

Jawetz said advocates for migrants are beginning to consider potential legal action. During Trump’s presidency, informal Signal and WhatsApp networks emerged across the country in which advocates and community members communicated real-time responses to policy changes they were seeing on the ground.

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“We would hope and expect to see much of the same this time around” if Trump wins, the former Homeland Security counsel said. “If you think about it, just the level of anxiety people [would be] living under on a day-to-day basis over a period of years is pretty extraordinary.”

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Trump-aligned House holdouts accused of holding ‘life-saving’ veterans bill ‘hostage’ over SAVE America Act

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Trump-aligned House holdouts accused of holding ‘life-saving’ veterans bill ‘hostage’ over SAVE America Act

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A sweeping veterans package supporters describe as the largest expansion of veterans’ health care and benefits in more than a decade is expected to return to the House floor when lawmakers come back from the July recess, but backers warn the legislation could once again become collateral damage in the Republican standoff over the SAVE America Act.

The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act rolls roughly 60 veterans bills into a package that would dramatically expand veterans’ health care and benefits. At its core, the legislation would cement veterans’ access to community care outside the VA while increasing benefits for combat-wounded veterans, caregivers and Gold Star families, expanding mental health services and enacting dozens of additional reforms.

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., told Fox News Digital he intends to bring the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act back for a vote as soon as the House reconvenes next week.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – MARCH 17: Eugene Simpson, 29, from Dale City, Virginia goes through physical therapy at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C. with Michael Minor, a kinesiotherapist with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs on March 17, 2006 in Washington, D.C., USA. (Photo by Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images) (Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images)

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HOUSE CONSERVATIVES DERAIL GOP AGENDA IN SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWDOWN

The legislation was held up last month after a group of House Republicans joined Democrats to defeat a procedural vote, stopping the House from taking up the bill.

“I’m feeling good as long as my members stay with us on the rule,” Bost said. “Right now, there’s some politics being played, not about this bill, but just in general.”

The bill became entangled in a broader House Republican fight over the SAVE America Act, legislation championed by President Donald Trump that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

On June 30, the House voted on H. Res. 1398, the procedural rule governing floor consideration of several bills, including the National Defense Authorization Act and the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act. The rule failed after 14 Republicans joined Democrats in opposition, preventing the House from taking up the veterans package and bringing floor business to a standstill. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., claimed to have voted against the rules vote in protest against House leadership’s handling of the SAVE America Act. As a result, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sent the members home early.

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Bost accused the holdouts of effectively putting veterans legislation on hold.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs building is seen in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2019. (Photo by Alastair Pike / AFP) (Photo credit should read ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Images) (Photo credit should read ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Image)

‘IT’S A MESS’: GOP TURNS ON HOUSE CONSERVATIVES AS VOTER ID BLOCKADE STALLS TRUMP’S AGENDA

“They’re holding all bills hostage,” Bost said. “They’re not voting for any rule. Any bill that has to pass a rule before it comes to the floor—which this bill does because of its size—can’t move.”

Although Bost said he supports the SAVE America Act and has voted for it three times, he argued the Senate’s failure to act should not stop the House from advancing unrelated legislation.

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“I agree with that bill,” Bost said. “But the Senate still has to do their work. We don’t stop our work because the Senate isn’t doing it.”

With 23 legislative days left in the Congressional session, Concerned Veterans for America Strategic Director John Byrnes, a supporter of the bill, said time is of the essence.

“There are lots and lots of things that have to get done,” Byrnes told Fox News Digital. “There’s also the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a must pass every year, so these things eat up time. There’s requirements to have debate on these, which eat up session time.”

Byrnes argued that every procedural delay pushes other legislation further down the calendar.

“This bill will save lives in 2027,” Byrnes said. “If we lose veterans because they could have had faster, better access to health care, we’re never going to get those veterans back.”

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Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill. ( )

TRUMP’S SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWS SIGNS OF LIFE IN THE SENATE DESPITE REPUBLICAN REVOLT

But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who also voted no on the procedural vote, told Fox News Digital that he has concerns about how the bill is financed.

“I appreciate what the chairman’s trying to do in some respects, but there’s a few issues,” Roy said.

Among them, Roy pointed to provisions offsetting new spending through changes affecting other veterans.

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“You’re taxing certain veterans to provide some sort of benefits and changes to other veterans,” Roy said. “There are concerns about some of the pay-fors.”

Veterans of Foreign Wars has also taken issue with Section 108 of the bill, warning that it would codify changes to future disability ratings for tinnitus and sleep apnea to help finance other veterans priorities.

But Bost said this is inaccurate.

“No veteran is going to have their benefits reduced,” Bost said. “If you’re receiving a benefit right now, that’s not going to be reduced at all.”

Roy, who previously served two years on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said he supported a lot of what the bill was seeking to accomplish; but said other pieces of legislation are priorities, too.

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“There is a block of us for whom border security, the SAVE Act and demonstrating our leadership on major issues is critical,” Roy said. “Some of these other bills may or may not get hung up based on a desire of many in the conference to see movement on other things.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Luna’s office and the White House for comment.

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Assassinations unleashed under Trump haunt Iran war endgame

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Assassinations unleashed under Trump haunt Iran war endgame

Shortly before President Trump ended a ceasefire with Iran this week, Israeli officials presented his team with intelligence indicating Tehran was hatching new plots to kill him.

It was not the first such warning. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have tracked evidence for years of Iranian efforts to target the president, with signals only increasing since the start of the war.

Their desire to target Trump and his top aides began six years ago, just outside Baghdad International Airport, when the president ordered a drone strike that killed Iran’s most powerful general. The assassination of Qassem Suleimani brought the two countries to the brink of war.

Yet even as full-scale war was averted, top Iranian officials vowed revenge for the strike, authorizing attempts on the lives not just of the president, but of his secretary of State and national security advisor, among others, even after they had left office.

Now, calls for revenge have reached a sharper pitch in Tehran, after a joint U.S.-Israeli operation killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war in February.

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At Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies this week, red flags of vengeance flew throughout the capital as protesters explicitly called on their government to “kill Trump.” His son, Mojtaba, the new supreme leader, was absent from the commemorations, fearing assassination himself.

Mourners hold an anti-President Trump banner at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque during mass funeral prayers for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family in Tehran on Sunday.

(Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The prospect of foreign assassination plots targeting U.S. leaders puts the United States in dangerous new territory, where its embrace of political killings could ultimately place its own officials at unprecedented risk. And experts fear the existential threat of assassination has pushed peace further out of reach: When both sides believe their survival is at stake, the trust required for diplomacy becomes far harder to achieve.

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Israeli news organizations have reported that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cited Iranian attempts to kill Trump in recent years as part of his case to go to war in the first place.

A U.S. official told The Times that a range of serious threats exist against the president, including from Iran, but that Israel’s intelligence pointed to a more specific plot. The official did not provide further details. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has said in recent months that the government sees vengeance against U.S. officials as “its legitimate duty and right,” and “will fulfill this great responsibility and duty with all its might.”

“The Suleimani killing accelerated a lifting of restraints on foreign assassinations — and the taboo on targeting and killing foreign leaders, with U.S. military assets, has been more or less lifted,” said Matt Dallek, a political professor at George Washington University.

“If the United States sets the example of how to conduct international relations, and it is using assassination of foreign leaders as a political weapon, it’s only logical that other countries will be more inclined to also engage in assassinations,” Dallek added. “It does seem likely that Trump will have a bigger target on his back.”

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Returning from a NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday, Trump was forced to switch back to an old model of Air Force One — equipped with specialized defensive technologies — from a new plane given as a gift by Qatar, after the Secret Service warned of potential threats to the aircraft from Iran.

“They want to take out the U.S. leader — me,” Trump told reporters aboard the plane. “I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long.”

The threat has remained on his mind in the days since. In an interview with the New York Post, Trump told the reporter, “I hope you’ll miss me,” adding that he has “been on their list for a long time.” And in a subsequent social media post Friday night, he warned of a catastrophic response he instructed the administration to pursue in the event Tehran succeeds.

“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote, “with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!”

The United States had a decades-old prohibition against assassinating foreign leaders before Trump’s presidency, codified in an executive order signed by President Ford in 1976 over concerns of a CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro.

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The policy was only strengthened further by subsequent administrations, fearing a new international standard for targeted killings could result in unintended consequences in the halls of Washington.

Other administrations have been accused of targeting foreign leaders before. Under the Obama administration, an international coalition targeting the Libyan regime of Moammar Kadafi during the country’s 2011 civil war struck his fleeing convoy, leading to his capture and killing by rebel fighters.

But experts say Trump’s explicit targeting of Suleimani and Khamenei — and his public celebration of their deaths — marks a new paradigm.

“Through words and actions, President Trump has done more to normalize political violence than any other U.S. president, certainly in modern times,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of “Our Own Worst Enemies: America in the Age of Violent Populism.”

“On the international front alone, the president routinely brags about killing Iranian leaders and seizing the leader of Venezuela, among others,” he added, “to the point that assassination is becoming the new normal in international politics.”

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Trump takes unusual step, lets bipartisan housing bill become law unsigned amid SAVE pressure campaign

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Trump takes unusual step, lets bipartisan housing bill become law unsigned amid SAVE pressure campaign

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A bipartisan housing bill became law Saturday at midnight after President Donald Trump declined to sign it, capping a weeks-long saga over whether the president would veto the measure amid frustrations with Congress over his stalled agenda.

Trump refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — legislation aimed at expanding the nation’s housing stock and lowering costs — in an attempt to pressure Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, despite the housing bill clearing both chambers with overwhelming majorities.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats,” he declared on Truth Social Friday morning. 

The Trump-backed election measure, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and impose voter ID requirements, has struggled to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. 

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Meanwhile, the House has not passed a version of the bill that includes the president’s proposed crackdown on mail-in voting and banning men from women’s sports.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)

HOUSE CONSERVATIVES DERAIL GOP AGENDA IN SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWDOWN

Under the U.S. Constitution, Trump had 10 days, not including Sundays, to sign or veto the housing measure after the House formally transmitted the legislation to the White House in late June. The president ultimately chose neither option, allowing the measure to become law without his signature.

Though Trump declined to veto the legislation, he sharply criticized elements of the bill and argued it should not have been a legislative priority in recent weeks.

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“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in late June. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”

Trump went on to call the housing bill “a yawn,” adding, “compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”

It would have taken a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override a veto — a margin the House and Senate exceeded when they passed the legislation. However, it remains unclear whether so many Republicans would have defied the president had he vetoed the bill.

Trump also appeared to criticize the bill over a provision restricting Wall Street investors from purchasing single-family homes — a policy he first proposed during his January State of the Union address and later urged Congress to pass. Trump previously argued the investor ban would give individual homebuyers a leg up against private equity firms in the housing market.

“I don’t want to hurt people that own houses, too,” Trump later told reporters, appearing to reference the provision. “These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses. They’ve become rich. I don’t want to hurt them either. What you want to do is what’s good for everyone, get the interest rates down.”

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The law also aims to boost housing supply by streamlining federal environmental reviews, loosening rules around the construction of factory-built homes, and incentivizing local governments to modify their zoning laws to allow more housing, among roughly 60 provisions.

Trump’s souring on the legislation created headaches for Republicans, who touted the bill as an affordability win as voters grapple with high housing costs.

“It’s irresponsible to postpone signing the Housing bill due to the SAVE Act,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a retiring lawmaker who lost re-election to a Trump-backed challenger, wrote on social media. “We need to start delivering relief to people for the high cost of housing ASAP!!”

Construction workers stand on the roof of homes under construction at a new housing development on June 24, 2026, in Valencia, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

WARREN TELLS TRUMP TO ‘SIGN THE DAMN BILL’ AS BIPARTISAN HOUSING PACKAGE REMAINS STALLED IN WASHINGTON

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Trump abruptly canceled a signing ceremony for the legislation at the U.S. Capitol in June with GOP leaders. The stage had already been set, with at least one senior Republican arriving unaware the president had called off the event shortly before it was scheduled to begin.

The president then declared he would not sign the legislation until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, despite Senate GOP leaders insisting the votes do not exist to advance the measure.

Trump has also expressed frustration with the Republican-controlled Senate for declining to weaken the legislative filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation in the upper chamber.

“GET SMART REPUBLICANS, IF YOU DON’T, YOU WON’T BE IN OFFICE FOR LONG!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday.

Before Trump came out against the bill, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history” and said it included an array of policies “long championed” by Trump.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15, 2025. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Meanwhile, Trump political operative James Blair touted the legislation for including the president’s Wall Street investor ban, which he referred to as a “signature commitment.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has argued that Republicans will still promote the landmark housing bill ahead of November.

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“We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively,” the speaker recently told reporters, referring to Trump. “And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”

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