Donald Trump’s immigration problem in five charts

DONALD TRUMPCBPICEICE CBP talks tough on . But it can be tricky to figure out when his campaign speeches are bluster and when they are blueprints for policy. The appointments of Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, anti-immigration hard-liners, to important posts signal that Mr Trump is serious about his pledge to carry out mass deportations of illegal migrants. Much of his immigration wishlist is unchanged since his first term. Data reveal how effective he was then and how he might be constrained in his second term.Start with the number of migrants crossing America’s southern border (see chart 1). During Joe Biden’s term encounters between migrants and border-patrol agents reached record highs. At his rallies Mr Trump repeatedly said that this increase did not happen until he left office. That is misleading. Between 2018 and 2019, when Mr Trump was president, border-crossing attempts increased by 71%, although encounters subsided as he prepared to leave office. The initial surge was so great that detention facilities and jails filled up; a quarter of the new arrivals had to be released, with a notice to appear at an immigration court.Title 42, a covid-era rule that made it easy to quickly expel irregular migrants, contributed to the rise in encounters. Because expulsion to Mexico was so rapid, migrants tried their luck repeatedly, increasing the number of encounters at the border.America’s domestic politics plays a role in these numbers. For example, many migrants rushed to the border in the months before Mr Trump took office the first time, hoping to beat harsher restrictions. But factors outside of a president’s control can have a bigger bearing. An economic downturn in 2007-08, during Barack Obama’s presidency, made America a much less attractive destination than it is now. And turmoil in countries such as Venezuela can push people towards America regardless of who is president.The immigration courts that are responsible for the fate of these migrants have become overstretched (see chart 2). The backlog of cases more than doubled during Mr Trump’s term, and then tripled under Mr Biden. The number of judges who deal with these cases has risen steadily, but not by enough to cope with the caseload. If America’s 735 immigration judges ruled on four cases every business day, and no new cases were added, it would take them more than five years to clear the docket. Mr Trump’s plans for mass deportations could increase the pressure on immigration courts, and further increase processing times (which, on average, is already more than 1,000 days).Despite all these pressures, the number of border-patrol agents has barely budged in at least a decade (see chart 3). In 2014, under Mr Obama, there were 21,000 agents patrolling the border. During Mr Trump’s presidency it declined by several hundred.Adjusted for prices, the requested annual budget for Customs and Border Protection (), the agency that patrols America’s borders, is the lowest it has been in three years. Political wrangling stalled extra funding for the agency this year. (Mr Trump pressed Republican lawmakers not to pass a , a fact Democrats sought to use against him in the election campaign.) Mr Trump promised during the campaign to add 10,000 agents in his second term, and to give them each a retention and signing bonus worth $10,000.Our fourth chart shows the number of deportations from inside the country. Mr Trump celebrated raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (), the agency responsible for removing illegal migrants who make it well beyond the border. In May 2019 the agency arrested roughly 57,000 people, a record monthly number.Still, such raids , using lots of resources to deport relatively few migrants. In fact, deportations fell significantly after Mr Obama left office (rights groups called him “deporter-in-chief”). Annual “non-citizen removals” were on average 22% higher in his second term than during Mr Trump’s time in office. Under Mr Biden, deportations by reached record lows. However, including those who were returned by agents, there has been roughly the same number of overall repatriations in the past four years as there were during the Trump administration.The Pew Research Centre estimates that roughly 11m people were living in America illegally as of 2022, and that the number has probably increased further in the past two years. That is a reversal from the declines under Mr Trump and Mr Obama, and in the latter years of George W. Bush’s presidency (see chart 5). Most of these migrants have lived in America for more than a decade; many have children who are American citizens.Mr Trump’s plans to deport millions of people would be very expensive (one estimate puts the cost at $150bn). But even if the numbers fall short of his ambitions—logistical hurdles abound—his policy could still create a . He was unable to push through significant changes to America’s immigration system in his first term. That will not stop him from trying again over the next four years.