On the campaign trail, president-elect Donald Trump said he would implement a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants on "day one" of retaking the White House. In two months, have the opportunity to make that promise a reality.
In an interview with NBC News, Trump said there’s “no price tag” for his mass deportation plan, arguing that his administration will have “no choice" but to deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the country.
The Pew Research Center estimates there are a little under 2 million undocumented immigrants living in California, so the state would feel those mass deportation more than anywhere else in the country. What would it mean for the society and economy of Southern California?
Claude Arnold, a former special agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles, and Amada Armenta, director of UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute, joined KNX News’ daily political show Countdown 2024 to discuss how it would play out.
Listen here:
Arnold said that carrying out mass deportations would require shifting the primary mission of the Department of Homeland Security from processing immigrants to securing the border and removing people who are in the country illegally.
“Under the current administration, the resources of the Department of Homeland Security weren't really used to remove people who are here illegally or to prevent their entry,” he said. “Border patrol agents weren't stopping people from crossing the border. They were facilitating their entry by processing them to be allowed into the US. So all that's going to be shifted.”
Arnold said he expects the Trump administration to challenge sanctuary laws in states like California, which limit cooperation between state and local police and federal immigration agencies.
“Immigration enforcement isn't the purview of the state. You know, it's constitutionally the purview of the federal government,” he said. “So I also think that the new Trump administration and its justice department are going to challenge those laws.”
Armenta said “the fear is really high” among undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles.
“The interesting thing about it is that the fear is kind of the point,” she said. “Sometimes people think that when policies don't come to pass, it doesn't impact communities, but when it comes to fear of immigration enforcement and fear of deportation, the consequences for people's mental health, their stress and trauma, really affect communities whether these policies come to pass or not.”
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Armenta said that 9 million children in California are part of immigrant families, and about 20% of them live in mixed-status families with some relatives who have legal status and others who don’t.
“The consequences of these policies for U.S. citizens and for California children are going to be really large,” Armenta said. “We know that when people are afraid of roundups, children stop going to school. This has implications for their learning. And we know that people stop going to the doctor, people stop reporting crimes to the police.”
She also said that one in 10 California workers are undocumented, so mass deportations would have a massive impact on the labor force, inflation, and tax revenue.
“These are workers that are paying into social security, they pay payroll taxes, FICA tax, all of these things that we depend on, and also things that they usually can't benefit from themselves,” she said.
Listen to the full episode above, and catch new episodes of Countdown 2024 every weekday at 2:30 p.m.
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