Former Congressman Carlos Trujillo, who served as an advisor on Latino interests to Donald Trump’s campaign team, told CNN’s Michael Smerconish Saturday that targeted arrests and mass deportations of undocumented people in the United States are not “mutually exclusive” – in other words, both can happen at the same time.
Trump is likely to target “ten million people” who entered the United States “illegally under the Biden/Harris administration,” he said. It’s unclear what source Trujillo referenced for that claim. In July 2024, the Pew Research Center reported that 8.3 million workers in the United States in 2022 were unauthorized immigrants. Undocumented people also represented 3.3% of the country’s population in the same year. At the same time, the lawful immigrant population grew from 24.1 million in 2000 to 36.9 million in 2022.
In September, the Wall Street Journal reported the Congressional Budget Office estimates net immigration since the beginning of 2021 to be at approximately 9.3 million people, “more than three times the net number of people that entered the country over the previous four years.”
“I think one thing that has to be clear is that it’s going to be done in a thoughtful, strategic manner,” Trujillo said. “You’ve heard news reports of we’re just gonna raid public schools and pick up children and send them back to their country of origin — I think the administration has made it abundantly clear that that is not the case.”
“We’re talking about people who have entered the country illegally, who have been adjudicated through the process, who have had law enforcement contacts — that means they have been arrested in this country or in their previous country of origin, those are the first people who need to be removed from this country,” Trujillo added. “Not only for the safety of them, but for the safety of all Americans who live in this country.”
When asked how the administration knows how to find where undocumented people live in the United States, Trujillo explained that the Trump team will begin with people “who have had law enforcement contacts.” The administration could be aided by biometric procedures at prisons and jails.
“If you’re driving without a license, you get arrested for driving while intoxicated or some other offense, those people are well known because of the biometrics,” he said. “Those are the easiest ones to identify.”
On Sunday, Trump announced former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan will serve as his “Border Czar.” Homan previously served as ICE’s director from January 2017 to June 2018.
You can watch the rest of Trujillo’s interview on CNN.
