On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to commence the largest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in history on Day 1 if he retook the Oval Office.
Now that he’s president-elect, he’s pledging to make good on that promise — at any cost.
“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice,” Trump said Thursday in an interview with NBC News. “When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., according to Department of Homeland Security estimates from 2022, the most recent year the data is available — though Trump has maintained, without evidence, that the real number is over double that.
Deportation at that scale would cost at least $315 billion, according to a report out last month by the American Immigration Council.
The president-elect has built much of his political foundation upon a dark premise that an “invasion” of violent undocumented immigrants are “conquering” communities across the U.S., playing on nativist fears to blame immigrants for rising crime, inflation and compromised elections. In Thursday’s interview, Trump signaled that messaging has paid off.
“They want to have borders, and they like people coming in, but they have to come in with love for the country,” he said. “They have to come in legally.”