Immigrant farm workers harvest broccoli on March 16, 2006, near the border town of San Luis, south of Yuma, Arizona. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  A top Republican on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday that when President-elect Donald Trump takes office and the GOP takes control of the Senate, lawmakers’ first priority will be to pass a border security package through a complex process known as budget reconciliation.

Trump has promised his base his administration will enact mass deportations of people living in the country illegally. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said at a Judiciary hearing that Senate Republicans will focus on increasing beds at detention centers, hiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and purchasing technology for enforcement at the southern border.

“It is our belief that the only way you’ll get control of the border is for deportations to start early,” he said. “If we do not have outflow, the inflow will continue.”

However, a senior fellow at the pro-immigration think tank the American Immigration Council, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, told the panel the endeavor will be expensive.

Carrying out mass deportations of 1 million people would cost about $88 billion a year for arrests, detainment and removal, he said. About 13 million people are living in the United States illegally.

Fixing a broken system

The committee hearing, led by Democrats who control the Senate now but will be in the minority next year, explored the ramifications of the Trump campaign promise of mass deportations.

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

The budget reconciliation process cited by Graham that would be used to pass border security legislation, if successful, would allow Republicans to get around the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate.

Reconciliation is generally used when one party controls the House, Senate and the White House, because it only requires a majority vote in each chamber.

Graham added that Republicans will also prevent those people who were paroled into the country through executive authority from employing another avenue for legal immigration status. The GOP has been critical of programs that allow certain nationals from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela to temporarily work and live in the United States.

“So if you’re here illegally, get ready to leave,” Graham said.

DACA program

One of the hearing witnesses, Foday Turay, is in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which is awaiting a federal court ruling on its legality after the Trump administration tried to end it.

Separately, on Monday, a federal court blocked the implementation of a final rule from the Biden administration to allow DACA recipients to have health care access under the Affordable Care Act. 

About 500,000 people are in the program, which is aimed at protecting children brought into the country without authorization from deportation. It also allows them to obtain work permits.

Turay is an assistant district attorney in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, and said if he were deported it would devastate his family, as he is the primary income earner in his household.

He said his wife, a U.S. citizen, is the primary caretaker of her mother, a person with disabilities who is undergoing cancer treatments. Additionally, Turay said he would have to leave his son behind if he is deported.

Another witness, Patty Morin of Aberdeen, Maryland, told how her daughter, Rachel, was killed. The suspect, who was charged with first-degree murder and sexual assault, was in the country illegally and had a prior criminal record.

Durbin said Democrats are not opposed to ICE carrying out its duties to deport those with criminal records and stressed that Trump’s plans for mass deportations extend beyond that group and would include people like Turay.

“This man for a living is prosecuting criminals,” Durbin said of Turay. “This other individual is a clear criminal with a record. When we say ‘mass deportation,’ should we consider them the same because they’re both undocumented?”

Graham said when it comes to DACA, “hopefully we can find a solution to that problem.”

Over the weekend, Trump expressed his support for coming to an agreement with Democrats to allow DACA recipients to remain in the country, despite trying to end the program during his first term.

Use of National Guard

Durbin said he is concerned about Trump’s comments about using the National Guard to carry out mass deportations.

One of the witnesses, Randy Manner, a retired major general in the U.S. Army, said he sees problems with using the military for mass deportations.

It could affect military readiness, he said, and the military is not trained in that capacity.

“Immigration enforcement is the responsibility of federal law enforcement agencies,” Manner said.

He added that having soldiers carry out that directive would have a negative impact on morale and recruiting. Manner also said having the U.S. military involved in that kind of political messaging would erode public trust.

Cost of mass deportations

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said not only would mass deportations be harmful to communities, but a financial strain as well.

Reichlin-Melnick said industries that would be hit particularly hard by losing employees would include construction, agriculture and hospitality.

Reichlin-Melnick also argued that ICE already focuses on arresting and conducting deportation proceedings for noncitizens with criminal records.

“The overwhelming majority of people who would be the target of a mass deportation campaign do not have criminal records,” he said. “They are people who have been living otherwise law-abiding lives in this country, living, working and, in many cases, paying taxes.”

Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn suggested that local law enforcement should be empowered to carry out deportations, even though immigration enforcement is a federal issue.

Art Arthur, a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for sharply limiting immigration, supported that idea.

“They’re going to be the people who are best able to pull those individuals out of the community,” Arthur said of local law enforcement.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, answers reporters' questions inside the Capitol building on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republican leaders said Tuesday voters have given them a “mandate” to enact as much conservative policy as possible once they gain unified control of the federal government in January, but declined to provide details about exactly what policies they’d seek to enact.

“The American people want us to implement and deliver that America first agenda,” said Speaker Mike Johnson. “And we have to do that while we have that energy and that excitement, beginning on the very first day of the Congress in the new year.”

The Louisiana Republican said the election results showed that Americans want lawmakers to focus their attention on “secure borders” and preventing “terrorists and criminals from entering the country.”

“They want and deserve low costs for groceries and gasoline,” Johnson said. “They want us to project strength on the world stage again and not the weakness that we have projected for the last four years. They want an end to the wokeness and the radical gender ideology and a return to common sense in our children’s classrooms and corporate boardrooms and government agencies. We’re going to ensure all that’s true.”

Not at 218 quite yet

The Associated Press, the news organization that States Newsroom relies upon for race calls based on decades of experience, hadn’t called the House for Republicans as of Tuesday, but was expected to in the coming days.

GOP politicians have won 214 seats so far, just short of the 218 minimum needed to hold the majority, though they’ll need a few more seats for safe margins after President-elect Donald Trump nominated a few of their colleagues to posts in his next administration.

Democrats are projected to hold at least 205 seats in the House, with 16 races yet to be called by the AP. That will give Republicans a slim majority when the next Congress begins in January and not much room to lose votes from either centrist or far-right members.

GOP lawmakers will hold 53 seats in the U.S. Senate next year after flipping seats previously held by Democrats in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, according to the AP.

Johnson said during the press conference on the steps of the Capitol building that he expected the GOP will hold a larger majority during the next Congress than the 220 seats it currently has.

But he cautioned that every Republican vote will matter since the party isn’t likely to have a large majority.

“Every single vote will count because if someone gets ill or has a car accident or a late flight on their plane, then it affects the votes on the floor,” Johnson said. 

Republicans in Congress, he said, are coordinating closely with Trump, who is expected to meet with lawmakers on Wednesday at the Capitol before Johnson heads to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida this weekend to hash out details of a legislative agenda with him. 

“President Trump is going to meet with President Biden at the White House. And so it was suggested … that he wanted to come and visit with House Republicans,” Johnson said. “So we’re working out the details of him gathering with us, potentially tomorrow morning, before he goes to the White House. And that would be a great meeting and a moment for all of us. There’s a lot of excitement, a lot of energy here.” 

Details on reforms to come

Holding unified control of government will allow Republicans to use the complicated budget reconciliation process to pass legislation without needing the bipartisan support that’s typically required to get past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

Johnson said the party is looking to employ that process for any policy areas that comply with the instructions, which allow lawmakers to make changes to revenue, spending, or the debt that are not “merely incidental” as part of the $6 trillion federal budget.

“We have lots of very specific plans to kind of do that, and the details of that will come together in the coming week,” he said.

Johnson said he didn’t want to “get into any details about any specifics with regards to reforms,” after being asked if Republicans would get rid of the Department of Education, one of Trump’s campaign promises.

“There’s lots of ideas on the table, but we got to work together, build consensus, work in coordination with the Trump administration on the order of the reforms and how we do it,” Johnson said. “So I’m not getting ready to give you details on that. But you can stay tuned.”