US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations

[modrepub]

25. Cost Per Deportee

I think people are missing something that I suspect is going on and it's really my conviction that Trump and his minions are extremely incompetent.

It would be nice to see what this is all costing us (the tax payer). If Trump is going to focus on "government efficiency" then we should be watching how much his ICE activities are actually costing versus what they have in the past.

I suspect the actual raw number of people getting deported is probably about the same or maybe even lower than under Biden. A lot of this is strictly for show and it's not a surprise to those being rounded up. I imagine most people subject to deportation are doing their best to avoid getting caught. Putting all this out in the open probably is making capture a whole lot harder. So fewer deportations.

Next, this administration seems hell bent on publicizing all of this. Running all these raids in front of the camera costs money (and probably detracts from actually capturing people). Dragging in the US military also runs up costs. Running military planes and using military installations is probably way more expensive than employing charters and such. Not to mention you risk losing military equipment and personnel if you have a catastrophic failure; on top of having to compensate anyone who dies in transport and the bad blood it will generate with some countries.

Yea this is all bad. But it becomes much worse if the number of deportees comes in lower than before and it costs several times more.