The Human Cost of Mass Deportations

We’ve seen plenty of talk about the cost, logistics, and the economic impact of mass deportations, but few have discussed the human costs

Photo by Matthew Ansley on Unsplash

If the thought of mass deportations seems like a confounding mess, that’s because it is. Many see it as an idea that would be impossible to accomplish. But don’t let the concept of a plan fool you. All President-elect Donald Trump and his cabinet have to do is expand on President Joe Biden’s current policies and executive orders, particularly, the asylum restrictions the White House put in place over the last several years.

While we all know what the costs will be regarding the loss of revenue and GDP growth over the next decade, we must look beyond the costs to taxpayers and the economy to fully understand what is about to happen. The current administration has deported more than 1 million people and is on pace to match Trump’s numbers from his previous stint in office. That does not include removals that balloon deportees to more than 4.5 million.

Biden’s asylum restriction policies will also open the door for the incoming administration to use those restrictions against migrants already in the country. Those rules will give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials an avenue to justify rescinding a person’s status. Thus, making them eligible to be deported under the plans being determined with each passing day.

Trump’s pick to head the mass deportation efforts has made clear that he has no qualms about deporting entire families, many of whom are mixed-status. Stephen Miller has also voiced his plan to denaturalize citizens and remove them from the country. Many think deporting citizens isn’t possible, but with the current Supreme Court which seems to interpret the U.S. Constitution based on original thought, it’s a very real possibility – 14th Amendment or not.

Despite the far-right politics that have become the Republican Party suggesting otherwise, noncitizen migrants do have rights under the U.S. Constitution. They have a right to due process and humane treatment under both U.S. and international law alongside the right against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to an education, and the right to legal counsel.

It’s the difference between “persons” and “citizens” in the Constitution itself.

It’s also worth noting that despite news media narratives referring to noncitizen Latino migrants as “Illegal” or “undocumented” in broad terms (language not used on other immigrant groups) the vast majority of migrants are documented. Even if an asylum seeker crosses the border between points of entry to claim asylum – a legal process – once Customs and Border Protection (CBP) releases them, they are in the system and are legally in the country.

So the hype about “illegals” isn’t what many think it is and is largely driven by broad media bias against Latino immigrants. The Trump administration’s attacks on the Latino community under the guise of “illegal aliens” or “criminal aliens” aren’t about migrants coming the “right way”. It is instead driven by fears of the browning of America, the dropping birth rate among white people, and the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

In other words, it’s based wholly on racism and nothing else. As we all know, throughout U.S. history, racists have been willing to sacrifice much to promote and enact their racist ideas. They don’t care if impoverished white people suffer so long as the white elites get their way. This time, they are not only willing to sacrifice a growing economy handed to them, but they are willing to cripple the poor with higher food prices, housing prices, and dwindling tax revenues.

They want to do this while doing irreparable damage to millions of immigrant families. The mass deportation effort isn’t as simple as forcing every migrant into Mexico. Migrants must be repatriated to their countries of origin and that requires the U.S. to negotiate a process with each country. Without those policies in place, it means millions of migrants could be stuck in private prisons and detention camps indefinitely.

For the Trump administration and the authors of Project 2025, that means free labor. Recently, Mike Howell from the Heritage Foundation commented on a social media post of mine saying that I shouldn’t be so negative about mass deportations and I should “think about the human PROFITS,” suggesting he views immigrants as chattel – not unlike the slavery era of this countries history.

Housing migrants in private prisons means just that. With the loophole created by the 13th Amendment that allows slavery “as a punishment for crime” and the history of leased prison labor to private corporations, the attitude expressed by Howell and what is dictated in Project 2025 tells us that free labor will likely be part of the mass deportation process.

What the country looking at moving forward, and assuming the Supreme Court does what we expect it to do in denying migrants their rights, not only can we expect family separations, indefinite incarceration of both adults and children that will not be allowed to be housed together, and false imprisonment of innocent Latinos, we can also expect inhumanity not seen in this country in over a century.

With media narratives that have created an environment of fear and that view Latinos as criminals, rapists, murderers, and thieves, we can expect every Latino to be treated as suspects regardless of whether we were born in the U.S. or not. When a cop pulls us over and demands to see paperwork – while not knowing exactly what he’s looking for – many innocent Latinos will be subject to false imprisonment.

It’s an issue we already see in Texas under policies like those Trump wants to enact. In that sense, the enormity of the human cost is impossible to estimate. It’s precisely why private prison stocks surged in value after Trump won the election. They’re set to profit greatly from human lives and investors are thrilled about it.

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I’m a freelance journalist. Find my work at Latino Rebels, Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, and more. I’m also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber or donate on Venmo, PayPal, or CashApp