The new leader of the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), was reportedly Trump’s guy to take over from McConnell.
This shocked me, to be honest, because Thune is a McConnell loyalist.
Thune is now trying to temper Trump’s deportation plan, but I happen to agree with what he is saying.
Big Job
When Trump said he was going to have the biggest mass deportation in the history of the country, I am not sure he considered what this would involve.
First and foremost, he is going to have to get through Democrat sanctuary cities, and that is not going to be easy because they will litigate this to the Supreme Court.
Second, Biden let in at least eight million people, and that is something that will take some time.
To that point, Thune stated, “There are a bunch of folks, over a million, million point four, I think, on the current administration’s list of people that need to be deported.
“So start with that, and then we’ll go from there and figure it out.
“But I think that the administration, when they take office, these are decisions, obviously, they’re going to have to make, and we want to work with them to ensure that we have a safe and secure southern border where people don’t have the incentive structure they have today, which is essentially come to this country, and we will waive you in.
“People have to understand that we are a nation of immigrants, but we are, first and foremost, a nation of laws, and you’ve got to follow the law.”
Believe it or not, in recent history the biggest deportation numbers came the last two years of the Obama administration, where he removed more than 400,000 migrants each year.
The biggest deportation that ever took place was in 1955 under President Eisenhower, where they reportedly deported about 1.3 million people, but Ike did not have the legal obstacles that Trump will have.
Ask me to put a number on this, and I would say that if Trump gets somewhere between two and three million deported over the next four years, he will be lucky.
There is one more issue, however, and that is that Trump is now talking about amnesty for DACA recipients, which would likely include some type of pass for their immediate family members.
The last report I saw was about 530,000 recipients, and when you add their family, it is probably about two to three million, meaning those numbers will likely offset any deportations that Trump manages to have during his administration.