Trump's Use of the Military to Carry Out Mass Deportation is Poised to Face Legal Hurdles, Experts Say

President-elect Donald Trump campaigned throughout the 2024 general election cycle on carrying the largest mass deportation operation in American history. This week, he confirmed that in order to do so, he plans on declaring a national emergency and using the military. But with just a few weeks until he moves into the White House, experts say this may not be as easy to do.

On his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump responded to a post made earlier this month by Tom Fitton, who runs the conservative group Judicial Watch, and who wrote that Trump's administration would "declare a national emergency and will use military assets" to address illegal immigration "through a mass deportation program."

The President-elect simply replied, "TRUE!!!"

Trump's top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, has also hinted about invoking a public health emergency power to curtail hearing asylum claims, as the Trump administration did during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, they reportedly plan to bolster the ranks of ICE officers with law enforcement officials who would be temporarily reassigned from other agencies, and with state National Guardsmen and federal troops activated to enforce the law on domestic soil, The New York Times reports.

Congress has granted presidents broad power to declare national emergencies at their discretion, unlocking standby powers that include redirecting funds lawmakers had appropriated for other purposes, The New York Times reports. Trump himself is not unfamiliar to this practice. In fact, during his first term, Trump invoked his power to spend more on a border wall than Congress had been willing to authorize.

However, this doesn't mean that Trump's plan may not face some hurdles and be put up to legal challenges in federal courts.

Juan Carlos Gomez, director of Florida International University's immigration law clinic, said that the U.S. Constitution and previous case rulings would not allow Trump to use the U.S. military to enforce immigration. Previous presidents have deployed soldiers in domestic territories, but only in times of war, such as the Mexican-American War in 1845 or the War of 1812, according to The Miami Herald.

"Hopefully judges act to limit any abuses of the law," Gomez said.

Throughout the campaign trail, and after he declared victory on Election Day, Trump has been vague about how he plans to carry out the mass deportation operations he has offered time and time again, as well as what kind of military assets could be used to round up and remove undocumented immigrants.

But despite these promises, some experts believe he will not be able to fulfill his plans.

Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program at New York University, said that Trump will likely not be able to deport the millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., as he has claimed he will do.

"He wants to look like he's doing big things. He knows that he can't deliver on his promise to deport tens of millions of immigrants from this country. There's no feasible way, whether you're talking about the logistics, the cost or the impact on the economy, to conduct deportations at the scale that he's promised," Goitein said.

Nevertheless, he can do "a lot of damage" to immigrant communities across the country.

"This is not to trivialize the amount of havoc that he can wreak," Goitein said. "Even if deportations don't take place at the scale he's promised, it could still be an unprecedented effort."

Still, immigration advocates are sending alarm bells at a potential fallout if his plans are carried through.

"President-elect Trump's dystopian fantasies should send a chill down everyone's spine, whether immigrant or native-born," said Karen Tumlin, the director of the Justice Action Center, an immigrant advocacy organization. "Not only is what he is describing in all likelihood illegal, this move would be the exact opposite of the legacy of service in which my family members were proud to participate."