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How Much Will Donald Trump's Immigration Plan Cost? The Experts Weigh In

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — "I will build the greatest wall that you've ever seen" says Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump in discussing his plans to build a massive wall at the border and deport all undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

Trump made the remark during a town hall meeting in New Hampshire as well as in an interview on CNN in talking about illegal immigration.

"They're illegal immigrants. They came over illegally. Some are wonderful people and they've been here for a while. They got to go out," Trump said on CNN.

He continued, "When you look at Baltimore, when you look at Chicago, when you look at the crime that's going on, you have some of these people are illegal immigrants. They're illegal. They've come into the country. They gang members. They're the toughest of the group."

But building walls along the border and deporting more than 11 million undocumented immigrants isn't free.

With the help of experts from four major national immigration groups, Politico says the ultimate cost would be $166 million. That includes $141.3 billion for mass deportation; $8.4 billion per year to triple the number of Immigration and Customs officers; and $5.1 billion to build the massive wall.

Other parts of the proposal, such as checking the legal status of employees, fingerprinting foreign visitors, and detaining suspected illegal immigrants would run nearly $11 billion, according to Politico.

But other studies have concluded the total cost could top $600 billion. Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute says they might be more accurate.

"When you think about the fact that half of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years and they're deeply integrated into their communities, tracking down all of those people actually, it's gonna be a high price tag," Rosenblum said via Skype.

Other questions are being raised about whether the children of undocumented immigrants, who were born in the U.S., could be deported.

"I'm not sure how you can deport an American citizen from his own country, so I think it would raise a whole host of legal questions, would be tied up in the courts, not for years, for decades,"
said Cathleen Farrell with the National Immigration Forum.

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