'Get ready to leave': At US Senate hearing, top Republican backs Trump's deportation plan

The Democrats and Republican lawmakers’ differences were visible on Tuesday (December 10) at a hearing in Senate on US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed plan to deport all illegal immigrants.

While Democrats and witnesses they called flagged the social and economic costs of Trump’s proposed plan, the Republican lawmakers supported Trump’s plan to the hilt with one lawmaker, Lindsey Graham, declaring that if you were an illegal immigrant, you should “get ready to leave” once Trump assumes office. Some Democrats stressed the need to arrive at a common ground.

In the 2024 presidential election campaign, Trump promised to deport everyone residing illegally in the United States. As illegal crossings into the United States via southern borders increased by hundreds of thousands during the outgoing Joe Biden administration, Trump made crackdown on illegal immigration central to his electoral platform. Various estimates suggest that there could be around 11-17 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

‘Get ready to leave’: Republican senator’s warning

At the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing, Senator Graham warned illegal immigrants that they should be ready to leave the country.

Graham said, “If you’re here illegally, get ready to leave. If you’re a criminal, we’re coming after you.”

Graham further said once the Republicans take over the Senate in January —as they flipped the control of the chamber in last month’s elections— they would bring a “transformational border security bill” that would expand detention centers, ramp up the number of immigration enforcement personnel, and finish the border wall that’s a pet agenda of Trump.

Republican Senator John Cornyn said that the election last month was a “referendum on the federal border policies for the Biden-Harris administration”.

Democrats flag socioeconomic costs

In sharp contrast to their Republican colleagues, the Democrats on the committee called witnesses that flagged socioeconomic costs of Trump’s proposed plan.

“Instead of mass deportations, [let’s have] mass accountability,” said the senator Dick Durbin, the committee’s Democratic chair. “Let’s fix our broken immigration system in a way that protects our country and honors our heritage as a nation of immigrants.”

Democrats turned to their witnesses – an immigration expert, a retired army major general and an undocumented prosecutor – to make the case that mass deportations would do far more harm than good.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council (AIC), said at the hearing that Trump’s plan would “would crash the American economy, break up families, and take a hammer to the foundations of our society by deporting nearly 4 per cent of the entire US population”.

Separately, the AIC has estimated that it could take up to around $1 trillion to carry out Trump’s proposed deportation plan. It has further said that it could slash the US economy by 4.2-6.8 per cent. Reichlin-Melnick further said the exercise could lead to a rise in prices of food.

“A single worksite raid in 2018 under the Trump administration at a beef plant in Tennessee led to ground beef prices rising by 25 cents for the year that the plant was out of operation following the raid,” said Reichlin-Melnick.

Some Democrats on the committee, however, called for a reaching a middle ground and supported a crackdown on illegal immigrants with criminal records and improving enforcement at the border.