So how is this mass deportation thing going to work exactly?

After Trump is elected president, his Supreme Court nominee (more likely several nominees) are approved, new restrictions are placed on the press, and an electrified fence is under construction along our southern border (since a literal wall will be less effective and more costly, and the fence has been a Republican goal for years), how will the Federal government begin the difficult process of deporting 12 million people?

First, it’s important to point out that anyone who assumes that there will not be an expectation and an attempt to carry this promise through is horribly naive, and is actively enabling Trump to look more moderate than he actually is. These people probably do not mean to do that; they may truly believe that the ludicrous and arduous task of deportation will be too cruel and un-American for even Trump to undertake. But if he has won the GOP nomination, and won the presidency, he will have already accomplished much more than they ever thought remotely possible. If and when Trump is sitting in the Oval Office in January of 2017, that is all the encouragement and endorsement he will need before implementing any of the campaign promises he thinks will build his power. And nothing builds power like fear.

Also, don’t forget that there is plenty of American precedent for a program like this. Not just the quarantine and imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two, but also the actual mass eviction undertaken by President Jackson, the Trail Of Tears. We Americans may like to think we’re more enlightened today, more compassionate that those of a century and a half ago, but we’re seeing plenty of evidence this is not the case. A Trump presidency would be solid proof of it.

A modern deportation event of over 3.5% of our population would probably not be a forced march on foot. This much we can probably expect. More likely, what we will see is a collection of people from their homes or workplaces, where they are arrested by locally-based officials and taken to a series of new or repurposed local jails, and then their relocation to a holding center near a mass transportation hub for processing and eventual deportation. Our current ICE facilities will have nowhere near the capacity for this new program. Some people will certainly flee the country before arrest, but even with those accounted for, the number of those being held will be staggering.

This process would result in a reign of terror for all immigrants. Since about one of every three to four immigrants in the United States is undocumented, the likelihood of documented residents and citizens being kidnapped in raids of workplaces without their families’ knowledge or awareness is tremendous. We should expect this to create a very unsafe situation for immigrant communities. This is not only in the danger of being deported, but due to the confusion of mass arrests immigrants will be easier prey for actual criminals. Disappearances will be so high, and communities in such disarray, that violence will be difficult to track.

After their arrest, these people will need to be transported to the regional centers, and will then be ultimately transported to another country. Highway, rail and air transport will probably all be used for this.

Although the fringes of the internet have been reporting for years (notably during the so-called “Jade Helm Invasion”) that UN prisoner transport railcars exist in the United States, they are usually referring to photos of solid-walled vehicle transports designed for shipping new cars and trucks to dealers. Those railcars have shackles built into them to attach to the vehicles being shipped, which has unfortunately contributed to these shocking theories.

It’s unlikely that we will see people moved by rail car, primarily because the US is currently designed more for highway travel, but also because of the obvious visual reference to Nazism. We’re more likely to see transport by bus, from local holding centers to camps. There are already prison buses in use, and it’s likely they will be used here. (On the other hand, rails are less visible to the public, but still, the historical parallels may be too much even for Trump and his Redcaps.)

These holding centers will have a major impact on the landscape of their locations. Before the prisoners are shipped to other countries, they must be held and processed. Some of course will simply be held indefinitely, as there will undoubtedly be difficult relations with their home countries due in part to this program but in all probability due to actions of the Trump Administration. The denial of Constitutional rights to non-citizens, which began in earnest under the Bush Administration, will continue to be publicly supported, further exacerbating international problems.

The centers must be located somewhere. Let’s start with the information that there are about 150 international airports in the US. Deduct the ones that fly only to Canada (even though we can be sure some deportations will go in that direction as well), and add in train and trucking hubs, and that can lead to an assumption of about 150-200 regional deportation centers. For simplicity, let’s go with 200, or an average of four per state. That means about 60,000 people eventually passing through each center.

According to international building standards for refugees, camps are not recommended to be larger than about 10,000 people, because they become much too difficult to manage above that size. We will use less, only 2,400 as our number for a typical camp population, because prisons over that size tend to be notorious for bad conditions. After we add in local variations, and profit-taking and lack of standards from privatization, because these will be built and run through private contracts, we will expect major differences in the size, quality and living conditions at every facility.

For this exercise, we will also assume that only 3% of all undocumented immigrants will be held at any one time. This leads us to expect a minimum of 200 US detention camps, each sized somewhat similarly to the largest US prisons, where we would expect to see the construction of a complement of storage facilities, parking, truck staging, perhaps new rail connections, buildings for federal offices and hearings, facilities for housing those assisting with appeals, buffer zones, etc. That suggests that each of these camps would occupy about 1,000 acres apiece, depending upon location, and may even be coupled with its own deportation center airport or station. Each will, by its size, have a distinct presence in the landscape that will be an appropriate reminder of our increasingly militarized society. We would anticipate that every camp will become a lot like a small heavily-militarized independent city, or may even take planning cues from an overseas military base in addition to prison camps.

These camps will exist for a very long time, and should be expected to remain permanently. The legal proceedings regarding deportations will not happen overnight, by any stretch, and today’s Justice Department is nowhere near being staffed in a way to manage this dramatic shift in caseload. After the initial buildup of dedicated staff, it is unlikely that the department in charge will be properly funded or be able to move cases quickly. There will be pressure to privatize at much greater cost in order to streamline the cases, but that has proven to be no more efficient (and usually less so, such as in prisons) in other areas of government.

Repatriating people at this scale is new for us, and the loaded planes of immigrants being shipped out of the US will require re-settling and processing by their home countries. Simply getting a plane into the air for this purpose isn’t a simple commercial flight. While individuals could be placed on a commercial plane, the scale of this endeavor probably precludes that. We are talking about 12 million people—that’s about 80,000 full flights over an extended period of time. Each of these flights will come with a complement of new security procedures, perhaps even its own airport terminals.

What we’re looking at is an entirely new industry, one that includes building, servicing, and transporting, as well as supplemental industries to all of those. It will become a new economic engine in some places, and a permanent part of the fabric of the entire nation.

That new fabric fits us, of course, because if these are the policies we as a democracy vote to support, this is the type of nation we clearly want to become.

(all images are of US ICE Detention Centers)