5 Ways Trump’s Mass Deportations Are Meeting Resistance. And Why It May Not Matter.

By Politico Staff

President Donald Trump appeared to turbo-charge his mass deportation plan in recent days. But he hasn’t changed a messy reality: His administration is facing obstacles across the government that underscore the difficulty he faces in carrying out what he has long promised would be the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history.

He has moved to seize control of the immigration narrative with a series of recent actions: Immigration agents, at the direction of the administration, arrested and moved to deport a green card holder who had a prominent role in the Columbia University protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Then, the administration invoked a rarely used 18th century law to speed up deportations. And then the Department of Homeland Security rushed a group of about 250 Venezuelans to a super-max prison in El Salvador in apparent defiance of a judge’s order.

Aside from these high-profile actions, Trump’s efforts were hitting turbulence on multiple fronts — including limits on detention capacity, legal challenges and the cost and logistical challenge of holding migrants at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Trump administration has stopped releasing deportation statistics. But the number of people being removed from the country isn’t higher, on an annualized basis, than under the Biden administration and is lower than under President Barack Obama.

From reporters across the POLITICO newsroom, here are five reasons why:

Big promise, cold truth

Trump’s big promise to launch a massive deportation campaign on Day One quickly ran up against personnel and resources challenges, limited detention capacity and a bogged down immigration court system.

The White House has ramped up pressure on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase arrest and deportation numbers, a tension that’s been seen in the shifting leadership at the agency. ICE director Caleb Vitello was reassigned last month, a move that followed the reassignment of two other top ICE officials from their positions.

Trump officials tried to meet this moment with an early PR blitz, touting arrests of migrants who have committed crimes. But while interior arrests have no doubt increased, the administration likely isn’t releasing deportation data because these numbers are “anemic,” said John Sandweg, acting director of ICE from 2013-2014.

ICE announced last week that in the first 50 days of the Trump administration, the agency has made 32,809 arrests — while not releasing a breakdown of how many of those were at-large arrests or additional deportation stats. Trump officials also said they had maxed out detention capacity at 47,600 people as they work with the Marshals Service, Department of Defense, and Federal Bureau of Prisons to increase bed space as they request more funding in Congress.

But even more detention capacity won’t resolve some of the biggest roadblocks to Trump’s mass deportation plans. There’s a historic backlog in the immigration courts, which is only set to grow as the Trump administration has fired judges and a slew of others are resigning or retiring this year.

The number of people trying to illegally cross the border has also plummeted, likely due in part to a realization among migrants that they will be prevented from seeking asylum as well as increased enforcement on the Mexican side of the border. That has resulted in fewer fast-track deportations at the southern border through an authority known as “expedited removal,” a major reason the pace of removals under Trump is likely so far comparable to Biden’s last year in office.

“Trump is a bit of a victim to his own success at the border,” Sandweg said. “And now you can only deport people who’ve gone to the immigration court … but that means that’s going to be anemic removal numbers.” — Myah Ward

Paying for it

Trump’s plans for the border and increased interior enforcement carry a big price tag. That means Congress will have to find the money — which may not be easy with a narrow Republican majority in the House.

GOP lawmakers are in the midst of the budget reconciliation process that would allow them to unlock more resources without Democratic support. The House and Senate have adopted their respective versions of a budget blueprint for Trump’s flagship domestic policy legislation — both of which provide additional resources for border security — but the two chambers must now reconcile key differences between their plans.

“It takes resources to do what voters elected us to do,” said House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, whose committee has broad jurisdiction on immigration issues, in an interview. “Resources for judges, lawyers … wall, drones, people, detention space, detention beds.”

Jordan has also said that he wanted to revive H.R. 2, the Republican bill that would institute broad changes to immigration law that passed during the last Congress with no Democratic votes. But in order for the legislation to reach Trump’s desk, it would require some support from Senate Democrats. Jordan has recently indicated he is open to changes to highly-skilled visa rules, a move favored by top Trump advisor and billionaire Elon Musk that could also be a sweetener for Democrats.

But bipartisan negotiations around border security floundered in 2024, after Trump moved to kill the resulting bill, calling it “a Death Wish for The Republican Party.”

It’s not clear what concessions Democrats would require in order to secure some of their support for whatever immigration law Republicans move to pass.

Congressional Republicans have mulled attempting to amend the Constitution to end the granting citizenship to those born on U.S. soil — known as birthright citizenship. Trump issued an executive order that would deny automatic citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants, an action that was quickly challenged and will likely be decided by the Supreme Court. Legislation enacting the restriction is a nonstarter for many Democrats, who note that birthright citizenship is enshrined in the law by the 14th Amendment. — Hailey Fuchs 

States of opposition 

Border czar Tom Homan went to Chicago in December and declared that mass deportations would “start right here.” Immigration raids have sparked fear in the city, but there have been far fewer than many had expected — or that Homan had telegraphed back when he was taunting the state’s Gov. JB Pritzker.

In Illinois — and other states led by Democrats, where a majority of the undocumented can be found — the raids have been less successful than the administration sought to claim in its earliest days. In part, that’s because tracking down and detaining people without legal status is a labor-intensive undertaking, and the U.S. government doesn’t, at least as yet, have the resources.

But the effort has also been hampered by activists who have conducted a “know your rights” campaign across the country to advise people of their rights, which include not opening the door to ICE agents who lack a warrant signed by a judge — and not just by an agent — or insisting on their right to see a lawyer. Homan has acknowledged that the campaigns are “making it very difficult” to arrest people.

The education campaign started right after the election. “We knew we needed to come into the new year prepared,” said Brandon Lee of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which is coordinating much of the effort in Illinois. The group’s hotline has seen an uptick in calls from residents asking questions or sharing information about when they see federal officials in their neighborhoods.

“We want to make sure that community members know their rights before an ICE encounter and also that after ICE does come to a neighborhood that people know how to respond,” said Lee.

ICE has been working around the issue, pursuing people outside their home or detaining people when they show up to their regularly scheduled check-ins with immigration authorities, reportedly including people who have been in the U.S. for many years. — Shia Kapos

A display of force 

Trump gave the military a prominent role in immigration enforcement almost immediately after taking office — dispatching troops to the border and pledging to send tens of thousands of migrants to Guantanamo Bay. Both initiatives have turned out to be mostly showmanship. As migrant crossings at the border have plummeted, the troops have little to do. And the administration has quickly cleared out everyone held at Guantanamo in the face of mounting legal and logistical challenges.

The Trump administration has taken the unusual step of deploying the military to boost its immigration agenda. He has sent thousands of troops to the border and asked the Defense Department to help with deportation efforts. But the Pentagon is struggling to figure out where to put undocumented immigrants, after scuttling a plan to house them at Guantanamo Bay due to costly flights. The Defense Department is looking at placing people in military bases, including at Fort Bliss in Texas.

Trump’s drive to use the military in support of mass deportation efforts has also raised legal questions. Defense officials could perform short-term detentions, but it gets much murkier using active-duty troops — who are trained in combat — to detain and guard migrants.

“When do you draw the line around where the military’s role should be?” said a former defense official, granted anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive issue.

The Pentagon also has limited bandwidth. Its focus on the southwest border has thrown considerable pressure on the U.S. Northern Command, which is charged with defending the North American continent. The administration has asked the command to take charge of the military mission along the border as it contends with Trump’s other objectives — including building a ‘Golden Dome” and defending in the Arctic. — Jack Detsch

A perilous legal landscape 

Perhaps in response to some of these obstacles, Trump has deployed increasingly audacious deportation tactics in the past few days. But those tactics are prompting equally aggressive resistance in the courts.

The most prominent fight concerns Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to swiftly deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang. Within hours of the invocation becoming public on Saturday, the chief federal district judge in Washington ordered the government to immediately halt any deportations under the wartime authority. Three planes full of deportees were apparently already in the air when Judge James Boasberg issued that order, and the administration did not comply with Boasberg’s oral directive from the bench to turn the planes around.

Despite the Justice Department’s arguments that it did not technically violate any court order, the episode angered the typically mild-mannered Boasberg — and intensified concerns that the White House is hurtling toward an irredeemable clash with the courts.

A different judge acted similarly swiftly to prevent the administration from deporting Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and Columbia University graduate student who led pro-Palestinian demonstrations there. In Khalil’s case, the administration invoked a rarely used provision of the immigration code that allows the secretary of state to deport any noncitizen if the secretary determines that the person’s continued presence in the U.S. would threaten foreign policy.

On March 10, two days after Khalil was detained, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of New York blocked the government from deporting him. Furman on Wednesday ordered that the case be transferred to New Jersey, where a new judge may hear Khalil’s petition to be released from custody.

In a third extraordinary case, the administration moved swiftly to deport Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University physician with a valid visa for highly skilled workers. Alawieh was detained last week while trying to reenter the U.S. after traveling to Lebanon. The government, alleging that Alawieh supports Hezbollah, sent her back to Lebanon, her home country, on Friday night. The deportation violated an order from Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, who had directed the government to provide him with 48 hours’ notice before deporting Alawieh.

Lawyers for Alawieh are fighting in court to bring her back to the United States.

All three legal battles are foisting Trump, the courts and the immigration system into largely untested legal terrain. In general, the executive branch has broad authority to deport people who are in the country without authorization, and courts typically do not supervise the president’s policy choices in this area.

But Trump’s aggressive reliance on unusual deportation authorities is triggering close judicial oversight. Courts have also blocked other immigration actions by the administration, such as an executive order seeking to “pause” refugee admissions. And judges will no doubt continue to scrutinize his moves — as in the cases of Khalil and Alawieh — to deport people who are not undocumented immigrants at all. — James Romoser