Former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly emerged from obscurity to trash former President Donald Trump's mass deportations pledge, calling the proposal "impossible" to implement.
In an interview with NewsNation host Chris Cuomo, O'Reilly claimed Trump's plan to deport millions of illegal immigrants would last "10 minutes" before getting blocked.
When Trump was president, his hardline immigration policies were frequently challenged by leftist groups like the ACLU.
O'Reilly speculated that Trump's mass deportation plan would meet the same fate.
“No, I don’t, because it’s impossible, number one. As soon as Donald Trump started to order federal marshals or whomever to remove people from their property, the ACLU and everybody else would fire lawsuits and the federal courts would stop it," O'Reilly said.
"It would take 10 minutes to stop it and it would never proceed after that. Even the Supreme Court would not go along with it,” he said.
President Trump has repeatedly pledged to carry out the "largest deportation operation in history."
His idea is popular with voters, despite the skepticism it has received from some corners.
Beyond the inevitable legal challenges Trump would face, skeptics point to the sheer number of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. as an insurmountable logistical challenge.
The actual number of illegal immigrants living in America, while unknown, is commonly pegged at 11 million. The 11 million figure is probably dated, however. Under the Biden administration, there have already been 10 million illegal border crossings.
Trump's running mate J.D. Vance has emphasized taking an incremental approach.
“Let's start with the first million who are the most violent criminals, who are the most aggressive," he said Thursday. "Get them out of here. First prioritize them, and then you see where you are, and you keep on taking bites of the problem, until you get illegal immigration to a serviceable point,” he added.
President Trump has pointed to using local police or the National Guard.
“Our local police know everything about these criminals that have come into the country," he said Tuesday. "They know their names and their middle name, they know where they live, what country they came from," he said. "We’ll work with the local police and we have to get them out and you’re going to want them out and everybody’s going to want them out.”
