Donald Trump’s Deputy Policy Chief, Stephen Miller, met Wednesday with members of the House Republican Study Committee to begin planning for the mass deportation of immigrants.
“He talked about how the cost of immigration is costing this country and he used the example of if an illegal has four children they have the same rights and privileges to the gimmes that Americans do, health care, education, all of that,” Rep. Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, told the Daily Beast.
Miller reportedly told the attendees to determine the funding needed to carry out Trump’s deportation plan, which they are expected to include in a reconciliation bill that requires a simple majority to pass through Congress. This would allow the party to secure funding for mass deportations without any Democratic support, as long as there aren’t many defectors within the slim Republican majorities in Congress.
While the GOP reconciliation bill will include tax cuts for the wealthy and draconian changes to immigration policy, the reconciliation process was originally used under Democratic administrations for more progressive policy items. Under President Barack Obama, reconciliation was used to pass health care reform in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Under President Joe Biden, it was used to pass the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act.
But now, Republicans are using the reconciliation process to move forward with Trump’s immigration policy, which is likely informed by Miller’s racist history. Miller served as an aide to former Sen. Jeff Sessions during which he promoted white supremacist literature, objected to efforts to remove symbols honoring the pro-slavery Confederacy, and promoted racist immigration stories.
During Trump’s first term, Miller was a key architect of the policy that separated immigrant families to supposedly dissuade border crossings. The policy led to the separation of children from their parents, and a reunification process that is still ongoing under the Biden administration. Family separation was condemned across the world by figures like Pope Francis.
There is widespread concern about the mental and emotional harm that mass deportation is likely to cause for thousands of families, but experts have also warned that there will be a financial cost.
A “highly conservative” estimate from the American Immigration Council found that Trump’s mass deportations would cost at least $315 billion. The council also projected that the amount of funding used for a 10-year deportation program could build more than 40,450 new elementary schools, construct 2.9 million new homes, pay college tuition for 8.9 million people, and provide brand new cars to more than 20.4 million people.
Trump, Miller, and their Republican allies in Congress nonetheless seem locked in on foisting this extreme policy on the American public. Only time will tell how much it will cost us.
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