In the heat of a political campaign, candidates make all manner of pledges and promises regarding what they plan on doing if they are elected. (With Kamala Harris being the notable, historical exception in most cases.) Sometime even those of us who cover such things for a living almost wish we could get them to simply shut up for a while. Many of these promises deal with bread-and-butter issues like the economy, crime prevention, inflation, and jobs. As a candidate for the White House for the third time, Donald Trump has addressed all of these issues and more. But he brings one pledge into the mix that has progressives quite concerned. Trump has repeatedly promised to enact a policy on "day one" that will begin mass deportations of illegal aliens from the country on a scale never seen before. There are reasons to question whether this is even possible in the current era, but analysts from the Associated Press are sounding the alarm, saying that we need to take Trump seriously when he says this and that the lives of many will be disrupted by such a plan. (Times of San Diego)

Donald Trump has long pledged to deport millions of people, but he’s bringing more specifics to his current bid for the White House: invoking wartime powers, relying on like-minded governors and using the military.

Trump’s record as president shows a vast gulf between his ambitions and the legal, fiscal and political realities of mass deportations of people in the United States illegally — 11 million in January 2022, by the Homeland Security Department’s latest estimate.

Former President Barack Obama carried out 432,000 deportations in 2013, the highest annual total since records were kept.

Reporting from San Diego, Elliot Spagat of The Associated Press learned that deportations under Trump never topped 350,000. But he and his chief immigration policy architect, Stephen Miller, have offered clues in interviews and rallies of taking a different approach if they are returned to power in November.

The AP offers us a timely reminder of who the actual "Deporter in Chief" really was and it wasn't Donald Trump. Perhaps surprisingly, that would be Barack Obama, who deported more than 425,000 people in 2013 according to the Department of Homeland Security. The closest Trump ever came to that record was still more than 75,000 shy of Obama's record. It wasn't for a lack of trying, however. Trump truly did push to clear the decks as much as was possible, but a variety of political and logistical barriers stood in his way. So why does the AP believe that the "threat" (as they describe it) is so much more serious this time around?

One analyst claims that Trump's plans will rely heavily on using the military. This may prove difficult because the troops may not be enthusiastic about that sort of assignment and could "drag their feet." Others fear that the number of illegals in the country has swelled to such a point that the resources simply don't exist to effectively track them all and process them for removal even if the will exists to do so. These are very real concerns and can't be written off with a wave of the executive pen. DHS placed the number of illegals in the country at more than 22 million in 2022. The total number now is believed to be closer to 18 million. Each of those people would require a court date, legal representation, and then they would need an available mode of transportation with the appropriate law enforcement escorts to see them on their way.

As things currently stand, we're lucky to be able to move a few tens of thousands of willing victims out of flood-ravaged areas on short notice such as we're currently seeing the wake of recent hurricane events. The underlying resources simply don't exist to move that many people that quickly, particularly when they all have a taxpayer-funded lawyer attending to them. Then there is the question of cooperation from officials at the state and local levels. Blue sanctuary states and cities oppose almost all deportations. They regularly pass laws forbidding their law enforcement agents from cooperating with ICE and refuse to honor their detainers. None of that will change simply because Trump is back in office.

So would Donald Trump like to institute a record-setting deportation program the likes of which we've never seen? Obviously he would and he may honestly believe that he can pull it off. But unless he has something very drastic in mind that I can't even envision at this point, I have no idea how he plans to pull this off.