U.S. president-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with his senior advisor Susie Wiles as he speaks following early results from the 2024 U.S. presidential election in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 6.Carlos Barria/Reuters
Donald Trump is vowing to spend whatever it takes to implement his signature policy of deporting the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, as he aims to drive his agenda far more effectively during his second term in the White House.
In an interview with NBC Thursday, two days after pulling off his stunning political comeback, Mr. Trump said “there is no price tag” for the deportation program, which would entail hiring large numbers of personnel and building mass internment camps.
Later in the day, the president-elect made his first move in retaking power by tapping Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff. Ms. Wiles, who will be the first woman to hold the job, was the de facto manager of Mr. Trump’s winning campaign and one of the few people to long survive in a top job for Mr. Trump.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, congratulated Mr. Trump and said he was ready to deal with him, amid fears Mr. Trump will pull Washington’s support for Ukraine against Moscow’s invasion. Mr. Trump told NBC that he had not yet spoken with Mr. Putin but “I think we’ll speak.”
Mr. Trump reaffirmed his vow to press forward with the largest mass deportation in U.S. history and to “make the border strong and powerful.”
“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not. Really, we have no choice,” he told the network in a telephone interview. “When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
The American Immigration Council estimates that it would cost at least US$88-billion every year to deport one million people, for a total price tag of just under US$1-trillion over more than a decade to get every undocumented person out of the country. By comparison, the U.S.’s annual defence budget is about US$800-billion.
The largest costs for Mr. Trump’s plan, the immigration rights think tank said, would be hiring personnel to find everybody and round them up, and constructing mass detention centres to hold them while the administration figures out how to repatriate them. The deportations would require about 24 times more immigration detention capacity than the U.S. currently has.
The estimate does not take into account the hit to the U.S. economy of abruptly removing so many people from the labour pool and, in some cases, the tax base. The program could also affect Canada if migrants flee north en masse to avoid deportation.
While Mr. Trump promised similarly large-scale plans during his first term, he struggled to make them happen. His administration changed the rules for deportation, allowing immigration agents to target undocumented people who had committed no other crimes. But the total number of deportations was lower than it was in some years of the previous Obama administration.
Mr. Trump also built just 737 kilometres of his promised wall on the more than 3,100- kilometre-long U.S. border with Mexico. Only about 84 kilometres of this was new, as most replaced previously existing barriers. Contrary to what Mr. Trump promised, Mexico paid for none of it.
This time around, Mr. Trump’s camp has aimed to be more prepared for office and to appoint only people fully committed to his agenda into positions of power. The president-elect took his first step in that direction by naming Ms. Wiles. A veteran Florida political operative who was senior adviser on the campaign, her operation was slicker than the chaotic, leak-prone teams around Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Ms. Wiles has been working for Mr. Trump since 2021, an inordinately long time for someone to last in such a top role for him. Unlike some of his previous handlers, she appears to have done little to restrict his behaviour or rhetoric.
She is also notably low-key with little public persona. During his victory speech, Mr. Trump asked Ms. Wiles and Chris LaCivita, his other top adviser, to speak. But Ms. Wiles repeatedly declined. “Susie likes to stay in the background,” Mr. Trump explained. “She’s not in the background.”
Ms. Wiles also knows Mr. Trump’s mercurial nature. After working on the Florida wing of his 2016 campaign, she ran Ron DeSantis’s successful bid for governor. In the wake of a falling out, Mr. DeSantis had her ousted from Mr. Trump’s re-election bid, Politico reported. But Mr. Trump ultimately brought her back. And she got a form of revenge when Mr. Trump steamrolled Mr. DeSantis in this year’s Republican primaries.
Mr. Trump went through four chiefs of staff during his previous term, including one, retired general John Kelly, who later described him as a fascist.
Among the first files that Mr. Trump has promised to tackle is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which he vowed during the campaign to end before even taking office. Such a swift resolution would likely entail putting pressure on Kyiv to cede territory to Moscow for a peace deal.
Mr. Putin on Thursday, answering questions at a policy forum in Sochi, Russia, said “we are ready” for discussions with Mr. Trump. “I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate him on his election as president of the United States of America,” he said.
The Russian autocrat praised Mr. Trump’s handling of the assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally in July. “He manifested himself in the very correct way, bravely as a man.”
The U.S. has provided Ukraine with US$140-billion in aid since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. During the campaign, Mr. Trump suggested Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should have made any deal with Mr. Putin to avoid getting invaded.
“If they made a bad deal, it would have been much better. They would have given up a little bit and everybody would be living,” he said.
While in office, Mr. Trump attempted a rapprochement with Russia, including a famous summit with the Russian President in Finland. Since leaving the White House, Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin have spoken as many as seven times, according to War, a book released this year by journalist Bob Woodward.
Mr. Trump also has a history with Mr. Zelensky. Mr. Trump was impeached for withholding nearly US$400-million in military aid in a bid to press Mr. Zelensky into tarnishing Joe Biden by launching an investigation into him.
Mr. Zelensky this week congratulated Mr. Trump on his victory. “We rely on continued strong bipartisan support for Ukraine in the United States,” he said in a statement.