The centerpiece of Donald Trump’s second-term domestic agenda is the mass deportation of what he and his campaign say are 20 million or even 25 million immigrants who are in the country illegally.

"The Republican platform,” Trump said during his July speech accepting his party’s nomination for president, "promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” And while the best estimates have the population of immigrants in the country illegally at around 11 million people, plus the approximately 2.3 million migrants who have been released into the country on bond, parole, an order of supervision or conditional release, this doesn’t seem to matter to the former president, who has targeted anyone he deems "illegal.”

For Trump, mass deportation is the solution to most of the nation’s most pressing challenges. Mass deportation, he says, would end a supposed epidemic of crime and disorder. It would save the culture and secure the nation. And his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, says that mass deportation would, somehow, lower prices and alleviate the housing crisis. "We have a lot of Americans that need homes,” Vance said during this month's vice presidential debate with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. "We should be kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes, and we should be building more homes for the American citizens who deserve to be here.”