At the Arizona border, Trump details how he would implement mass deportation in 2nd term

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. — Former President Donald Trump, if he’s elected to a second term, would work with local law enforcement to apprehend migrants who entered the country illegally as part of his plan to implement the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, he said at a press conference in Arizona on Thursday.
Standing at the country’s southern border in Cochise County, Arizona, Trump said migrants living illegally in the U.S. will be deported by the millions and returned to their countries of origin. If foreign nations do not cooperate with this relocation, the United States will employ economic penalties, he said.
“We’ll work with locals — and they’re going to bring them (migrants) to us — and we’ll get them over the border, and we’ll make arrangements with the countries, and the countries will accept them back, and if they don’t accept them back, we do no trade with those countries, and we charge them big tariffs,” Trump said in response to a question from the Deseret News during a question and answer period following prepared remarks.
The Republican nominee for president in 2024 framed his candidacy as a return to order and safety, hours before Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Trump tallied off a list of crimes allegedly committed by migrants who entered the country illegally during President Joe Biden’s administration. Trump was joined at his press conference by relatives of victims who had been killed.
“The choice is simple, Kamala’s mass amnesty of criminals, or President Trump’s mass deportation of criminals,” Trump said. “I think that’s pretty easy.” Trump suggested allowing migrants to stay in the country under Biden’s asylum policies is tantamount to amnesty.
Trump spoke for nearly an hour, framed on one side by an unfinished portion of the 30-foot border wall constructed during his first administration, and on the other side by the ragged peaks of Montezuma Pass.
Following the press conference, Trump reportedly cut an interview short when he was informed by his security detail that his safety may have been compromised. A day earlier, Arizona law enforcement agencies announced they were searching for a man who allegedly threatened in an online post that he would kill Trump. The 66-year-old Arizona man was arrested on Thursday, according to the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office.
Trump said local law enforcement would be partners in his proposed deportation program. Police have boots-on-the-ground experience with which migrants represent a danger to the community, he said.
“They know the really bad ones. They’re a great help. We have to get the criminals out of our country immediately,” Trump said.
When asked whether families and children would be included in his proposed forcible federal removal of migrants — as they were in the mass deportations of Mexican immigrants in the 1950s — Trump did not provide a clear answer, saying “We’ll work on that.”
At other rallies, Trump has said he would follow the “Eisenhower model,” referring to “Operation Wetback,” which resulted in the expulsion of up to one million Mexican workers. At July’s Republican National Convention, where delegates were seen holding “Mass deportation now!” signs, Trump said his initiative would be “even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
The former president’s policy advisers, including Stephen Miller, who was at Thursday’s border visit, have said Trump’s approach would include expedited deportation proceedings that skip due process hearings. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would reportedly receive assistance from deputized local law enforcement and National Guardsmen to carry out deportation raids across the country. Large detention facilities would be constructed to hold migrants awaiting deportation.
These proposals would require a massive increase in resources and personnel for ICE and the immigration court system, experts have told media outlets. But former acting director of ICE under Trump, Tom Homan, recently said in a second Trump administration there would be a previously unseen level of deportations.
Trump made similar promises during his 2016 campaign, saying at one time he would deport “probably two million, it could be even three million” migrants with criminal records, and saying he would deport every immigrant in the country who was living there illegally, at least 11 million. While Trump deported at least several hundred thousand migrants — not including Title 42 expulsions — much more than the number that have taken place under Biden, he appears to have deported fewer migrants than his predecessors.
Brandon Judd, the former president of the National Border Patrol Council, said that increased deportations is an important part of border security because it creates an additional disincentive for individuals who are considering migrating to the United States.
“Anytime that people think they can cross our borders illegally and make it into the United States and they’re able to stay, they’re going to continue to come,” Judd told the Deseret News at the border. “So if you start deporting people, and people recognize that, ‘Hey, even if I evade apprehension on the border once I get to the interior I’m subject to deportation,’ the likelihood of them coming is going to be a lot slimmer.”
In an interview with the Deseret News, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who serves as the chair of the National Sheriffs’ Association border security committee, said voters have to detach their emotions from the reality of enforcing the rule of law. The problem of immigration in America cannot be fixed, Dannels said, until the law is enforced for those who are not following proper immigration procedures, even if they have been in the country for years.
“If they don’t have an asylum claim that’s justified, there’s got to be consequences and deportation is a process that needs to be addressed,” Dannels said. “This should never be politics. This should be about what’s the rule say, if you don’t like the rule, Congress, change it, and quit playing political parties.”
The border-town mayor of Douglas, Arizona, Donald Huish said he prizes the unity his town feels with their Mexican brothers and sisters on the other side of “the wall.” “If the wall wasn’t there, I don’t think we’d notice anything different,” he told the Deseret News, referring to the blending of Mexican and American culture in his home town of roughly 16,500. But that does not mean border policy doesn’t matter, he said.
Huish’s community has been racked by a steady stream of border-related crime, leaving the streets unsafe because of human smugglers driving at high speeds through the town, and straining city resources to help Border Patrol agents. He said he longs for the Trump-era policies that restricted asylum claims and freed up Border Agents to keep bad actors out. But he worries Trump’s regime of mass deportations would lead to large groups of migrants being dropped across the border from Douglas with nowhere to go but back over the wall.
“So what does that do to me?,” Huish asked. “I would hope that border patrol gets additional personnel.”
During the DNC, Harris — who previously campaigned on the phrase “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal” — shifted her tone on immigration, trying to strike a balance between migrants’ rights and greater border security. Harris and Biden touted a recent decline in border crossings as evidence that a new executive order restricting asylum claims is having an impact.
At Thursday’s press conference, Trump rejected Harris’ advances on an issue that he has long owned in public opinion.
“Kamala says she wants to talk about the future. No, these people want to go back to the safe past,” Trump said. “We will make America safe again.”