Senate Majority Leader Says GOP Needs to Be Realistic on Trump Mass Deportation Plan

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) speaks to the media during the weekly Senate Republican Leadership news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 13, 2022. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said that Republicans need to be “realistic” about President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to deport large numbers of illegal immigrants during his second term in office.

Trump has made mass deportations a priority, often saying he would initiate the largest enforcement action against illegal immigrants in U.S. history. After the November 2024 election, the president-elect selected as his border czar Tom Homan, who has pledged to initiate the deportations on day 1 of the new administration.

“Certainly there are categories of people who’ve committed crimes,” Thune told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Jan. 5 when he was asked about what groups would be targeted first.

“There are over a million people that the current administration had targeted for deportation. And so I think that we have to take seriously the fact that there are a lot of people in this country today, over 10 million, who’ve come in just in the last four years under this administration’s policies, many of whom are not here for good reasons.”

Thune then outlined what actions Trump could take when taking office, including introducing border security measures.

“The first thing is securing that border, and making sure that we change the incentive structure so people aren’t incentivized to come here illegally, which they have been for the past four years, and that we do everything to ensure that the border personnel, the ICE agents and border agents, have the resources that they need to do their job,” he said.

The Senate will make sure that Trump’s administration will have the “resources they need to enable them to do that,” Thune said.

“Is it realistic to deport everybody? I mean, there’s a lot of people in this country who are here illegally,” he said. “But I think they have identified already and, like I said, anybody who has committed a crime in this country clearly ought to be on that list.

“And there are a bunch of folks, over a million, 1.4 million, I think, on the current administration’s list of people that need to be deported. So start with that, and then we’ll go from there and figure it out. But I think that the administration when they take office, these are decisions, obviously, they’re going to have to make.”

The president-elect or members of his administration have not issued public comments on Thune’s statement to NBC. The Epoch Times contacted his transition team for comment on Jan. 6 but received no response by publication time.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agencies responsible for immigration and border enforcement, has estimated that there are about 11 million illegal immigrants living inside the United States.

In November 2024, Trump confirmed in a statement on social media that he would likely declare a national emergency to initiate his mass deportation plan, while Homan has said in interviews that the incoming Trump administration will prioritize criminal illegal immigrant deportations and worksite raids.

“Worksite operations have to happen,” Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Fox News in November 2024. “Where do we find most victims of sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking? At work sites.”

Some immigration advocacy groups such as the American Immigration Council have said that the deportation plan would be costly and would cause an economic downturn. The plan, according to the organization, would cost about $315 billion.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and pro-immigration groups have pledged to fight Trump’s deportation plans in the courts. During Trump’s first term in office, the ACLU filed lawsuits against several of his enacted policies, including some related to immigration.