Donald Trump is planning to launch a scheme to deport migrants that is similar to the UK’s Rwanda policy, according to reports.
Aides of the likely Republican election candidate are said to be drawing up plans to send migrants who illegally cross the southern US border to a third country for processing, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The UK Government reached an agreement with the African country to deport illegal migrants in 2022, but the policy has met significant legal obstacles and proved highly expensive.
According to the Journal, Mr Trump’s aims include expediting migrants’ asylum hearings, rescinding deportation protections and forcing other countries to take back people who try to enter the US from Mexico.
The former president’s team is “writing executive orders, policy memos and other documents in a bid to transform campaign rhetoric into policy” from his first day in office, the newspaper said.
“The logistical challenges will be really significant,” a former senior Trump official told the Journal.
Mr Trump has taken an extreme position on illegal migration ahead of the November presidential election.
Earlier this month, he told a rally in Michigan that on “day one, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”.
He also claimed, without evidence, that millions of migrants were coming to the country to carry out “plunder, rape, slaughter and destruction of the American suburbs, cities and towns”.
Mr Trump has pledged to remove “almost 20 million people” from the US, the equivalent of around 6 per cent of the country’s population.
More than 2.4 million people attempted to cross the southwest American border in 2023.
In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised that the first flights to Rwanda will take off at the end of June or early July.
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