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It’s unclear if Mr. Trump could carry out the deportations he has proposed without violating due process, especially at the scale and speed he has suggested.
The last time the United States carried out mass deportations was when President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized military-style roundups to expel hundreds of thousands of Mexicans in 1954.
What Mr. Trump proposes is much larger than Eisenhower’s deportation program, which was controversial at the time.
Mr. Trump would likely need help from local law enforcement, but many cities and counties have limited their cooperation with federal authorities.
Cook County in Illinois, which includes Chicago, adopted an ordinance that generally bars county police officers and jails from detaining unauthorized immigrants to be turned over to federal agents, unless the agents have specific warrants.
San Francisco is a so-called sanctuary city that issues local ID cards to unauthorized immigrants so they can have access to municipal services.
Democratic mayors of some major cities recently said they would do all they could to protect residents from deportation.
Mr. Trump’s plans are more aggressive than President Obama’s deportation program, which prompted sharp criticism from advocacy groups. During Mr. Obama’s first term, about 400,000 immigrants were deported per year.
