WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris dismissed former President Donald Trump’s pledge to mass-deport illegal immigrants Wednesday — mockingly asking how he planned to accomplish that goal.
“They have pledged to carry out the largest deportation — a mass deportation — in American history. Imagine what that would look like and what that would be,” the Democratic nominee told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
“How’s that going to happen? Massive raids, massive detention camps?” Harris asked in an incredulous tone. “What are they talking about?”
Trump has repeatedly pledged to carry out the country’s largest-ever deportation operation after record-setting numbers of illegal US-Mexico border crossings under President Biden.
Polling shows that the idea has majority support among voters ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
A Scripps News/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that 54% of Americans “strongly” or “somewhat” support the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, while 43% are opposed.
A CBS News/YouGov survey released in June found that 53% of Hispanic registered voters favor expelling all undocumented immigrants — and 50% support the construction of federal holding facilities to house them before deportation.
“Kamala Harris is out of touch,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
“Americans want our laws enforced while Kamala wants an open border that causes crime and housing prices to rise at the expense of hardworking taxpayers.”
Biden put Harris in charge of reducing illegal immigration in March 2021, but illicit border crossings instead surged to new highs in each of the first three years of her role.
The vice president said Wednesday that if she defeats Trump, she will resume a push for “an earned pathway to citizenship” for people living in the US illegally.
Many migrants who illegally entered the US under Harris and Biden were granted paperwork allowing them to lawfully remain as their asylum claims pend before badly backlogged courts.
It’s unclear if the Trump administration could rescind those discretionary grants of “parole.”
The Biden administration has deported some migrants found to lack merit for their asylum claims — including sending planeloads of families back to Latin America.
The US government has a variety of means to deport people — including booking charters or escorting deportees to the gate of outbound commercial flights.
The precise number of illegal immigrants in the US is unclear — as are the methods through which Trump would boost existing deportation rates.
A study from the Pew Research Center estimated that in 2022 there were 11 million illegal immigrants — of whom about 4 million were from Mexico and 2 million from either El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala.
Many of the people living illegally in the US overstayed their visas.
About 1.7 million illegal immigrants are from Asia — of whom about 725,000 are Indian — and roughly 775,000 are from Europe or Canada, Pew estimated.