Trump may match Obama on deportations, but would radically shift focus

Regional News

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President-elect Donald Trump’s most recent immigration pledge is to deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records, which he estimates at 2 million to 3 million immigrants – or roughly the same number deported by outgoing President Barack Obama.

Critics derided Obama as “deporter-in-chief” for his policies that led to the deportations of 2.5 million people, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, more than any other president and almost more than all previous administrations combined.

But while Trump’s latest proposal, outlined in an interview with “60 Minutes,” would match Obama in terms of numbers, experts say it would be a sharp departure in enforcement tactics, shifting the focus to people living in the interior of the country and away from the borderlands where most of the deportations under the current administration took place.

They also say that the “different enforcement dynamic” being advocated by Trump could lead to the deportation of 2 million people within four years – half the time it took the Obama administration.

“What we’ve seen in the last eight years is the creation of this significant deportation apparatus,” said Jose Magana-Salgado, managing policy attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. He said Trump will easily match Obama’s record because the “resources are there – they just need to be directed.”

While Trump appears to have backed off his campaign promise to deport all of the estimated 11 million immigrants living in this country illegally, experts say he will be hard-pressed to deport the millions who he said are living here with criminal records – because there just aren’t that many.