DENVER, Colorado — In 2016, former President Trump ran with a promise to build a border wall and tighten immigration policies. Many of his plans met challenges in the higher courts and never fully came to fruition. On a third election bid, Trump has promised even more stringent immigration policies.
On his campaign website, Trump shared in a video he would ban automatic citizenship for children born to parents without legal authorization to be in the United States. He has also vowed to terminate all work permits for undocumented people while also beginning a mass deportation effort of as many as 15 million people.
Support for Trump's policies
"I like what President Trump says he's going to do, mostly because it revolves around enforcing the laws that are on the books right now and not using executive authority in order to get around those laws," George Teal, a Republican Douglas County Commissioner, said.
Looking at the numbers Trump has been citing in his mass deportation plan, Teal believes the execution of the plan would be possible due to a gradual implementation and with the help of the National Guard.
"The federal government has the resources to execute such a plan [mass deportation]," Teal said. "Our state has state-level assets that could participate in that. But then, yeah, our local law enforcement, I think they're the ones that will provide that key on-the-ground knowledge in order to help for a successful execution."
If Trump were to roll out the plan, Teal thinks a slow rollout would prevent problems like overcrowded camps and detention facilities.
Ultimately, what Trump is proposing is a merit-based immigration system. Skilled workers would be welcome while unskilled workers may be turned away at the border, for visas and any other legal pathway to permanent or temporary residency.
"We do want a merit-based immigration process because right now we have, we don't even have that," Teal said. "What positive immigration could we be having? Of people who could come into the country with a positive impact and go through the process to become American citizens and bring skills, bring education, bring a population that could be productive to our economy?"
Meanwhile, Trump has also advocated for giving green cards to foreign-born students who have completed college degrees in the United States. Many of those students may fall under the DACA program, which offers protection from deportation as well as work authorization for children who were brought to the U.S.
"You'd have to look hard for a Republican who's truly opposed to legal paths to citizenship," Teal said. "I'm sure they're out there somewhere. I don't talk to those people. People like me, my neighbors, the people who I meet on the street here in Castle Rock, grew up in Highlands Ranch, they're all in favor of legal paths to immigration."
Teal said Trump should consider a process to work with Congress to come up with a legal path forward for, not only DACA recipients, but also those who would be eligible under a merit-based immigration system.
Critics believe Trump's proposals aren't realistic
Critics called Trump's proposals "impossible" when it comes to detaining and deporting 15 million people.
"That is impossible," Violeta Chapin, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Boulder and Associate Dean for Community and Culture, said. "We have 11 million undocumented people that currently live in the United States. We haven’t been able to locate all of them in the two, three decades that they have been living here, and to think that we could somehow find and deport more is not logistically practical. Immigration legal system is notoriously backlogged."
Processing times have continued to increase for those within the system applying for temporary visas, work permits and DACA renewals. Not only would Trump's approach further backlog the immigration system, it would also be costly to the American taxpayer.
"It's certainly extraordinarily expensive to put people in detention, and that would cost the American taxpayers a tremendous amount of money," Chapin said.
"Sending back people is extremely expensive because you have to put them in planes, and you have to send them on planes to their country," Dr. Alexandre Padilla, Professor and Chair of Economics at MSU Denver, said.
Chapin and Padilla said they both advocate for an extension of the DACA program, so children who were brought here by their parents and without their own doing aren't penalized.
If the DACA program were to be terminated, recipients would lose work authorization and could be deported once their DACA expired.
"You would lose good employees, maybe long-standing employees that had authorization to work," Chapin said. "But, now through no fault of their own, they have lost that authorization to work and are no longer employable in this particular job, right? They certainly are not going to pick up and leave. This is where they live. They will unfortunately fade into the underground economy where most of the 11 million undocumented folks live."
While Chapin said that merit-based immigration isn't an entirely bad idea, creating a system that solely operates on merits and points would be harmful.
"It's certainly a pro-rich, anti-poor system, which is not American in my opinion and is not something that we should be saying that we are as a nation," Chapin said.
Chapin said she would rather have tax dollars going into a public defender system for immigrants rather than to mass deportations or detentions.
"If we had more lawyers to help streamline and sort of work with people to sort of figure out what are their options forward, do they have any options forward or do they not?" Chapin asked. "It would help to sort of streamline the process and more efficiently move people through."
A system that would provide lawyers would also notify people more immediately if they had no pathway to residency in the United States and would quickly distinguish those who may be able to stay versus those who are not eligible. The wait times, in part due to a lack of lawyers, is a contributing factor to the immigration court's backlog.