“Collect them all up, put them in buses and send them home.”
Consider the logistics. Let’s say 50 people per bus. Perhaps a little more.. For 1,000,000 people that would be 20,000 buses. Then gathering them someplace, feeding and sleeping, sending them where? To Mexico, first need permission of the Mexican Government. Guatemala, El Salvador and points south. Again, need permission of Mexican government. It is several days to Central and Southern Mexico where many Mexicans come from. Feeding and sleeping along the way. For 10 million they would need at least 200,000 trips. How much would each deportation cost, collecting with law enforcers, legal proceedings to prove illegality, housing, transport, etc. Let us guess $5,000. So $5 billion for the first 1 million. How many others come from other places. South America, Europe, Asia, etc. Cost a lot more to send them back. No buses—ships, airplanes, etc. “It’s just never going to happen.”
A county in the greater DC area, Prince William Co., had a strong crackdown on immigrants who fled to nearby counties. Ruined the economy of the county. Housing worse than anywhere in the area, many businesses folded, tax base shrank bigtime, etc.
For 20,000 buses it takes 10 trips each to deport 10 million. At $100 per deportee, that is $5,000 per trip to pay for food, fuel, two drivers and two guards for an average three day trip. Seems like plenty to me. That’s $1 billion to deport 10 million illegals.
Less hassle, though, to send them by plane. One-way airfare from NYC to Mexico City is $400, from LAX to Mexico City is $150, $500 to Guatemala City, $1,000 to China. Obviously Mexico is the home country of the vast majority, so figure $300 avg to get them to Mexico City. I’d think it worth it to get them far from the border so it takes them longer to attempt to return.
I’d also be willing to pay bounty hunters $1,000 per illegal. So $13 billion total for 10 million illegals.
And none of this cost would be to taxpayers, since it would be paid by assessing the employers whose information the deportees provided plus auctioning off the deportees’ property.
We don’t need to prove they are here illegally. The current deportation cost is a stratagem of the open borders crowd and has created an industry around immigration lawyers that should be dismantled. The burden is on them to prove they are legal residents. The existing law REQUIRES them to have their visa, green card (or photo ID which required one of those docs to acquire) on their person at all times. If they cannot give prima facie evidence that they are legal residents, and their prints and DNA do not match any other crimes, then they can be deported immediately at no cost to the courts. They are not legal residents and are not facing imprisonment, fines, flogging or capital punishment — their penalty is simply being returned to their home country — so why give them a court hearing ?