Far-Right Sheriffs Want to Carry Out Donald Trump’s Mass Deportations. That’s Not Possible

“If we wanted to do immigration law, we would go work for Border Patrol,” Wilmot says.

Homan, Lamb, Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, and incoming Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple, who were also at the meeting, did not respond to requests for comment about what they discussed.

When asked about Mack and his push to position sheriffs as a critical part of the mass deportation efforts, Wilmot dismissed the former sheriff’s claims.

“No one listens to him,” Wilmot says. “He hasn’t been a sheriff in a long time. He is not engaged with sheriffs across the country. He’s not involved in any of our decisionmaking. He pushes his own agenda.”

In response, Mack claims that he has held more than 100 seminars and conventions with more than 1,200 sheriffs since leaving office. “I invite Sheriff Wilmot to do what we ask of all the sheriffs, just come and see our class for yourself,” he tells WIRED. “If you don’t like it, then criticize me and the work I do.”

Jessica Pishko, a lawyer and author of the recently published The Highest Law in the Land, a book that examines sheriffs’ unchecked power, agrees with Wilmot. “I would be wary of taking anything Richard Mack says at face value,” she says. “He was not a part of the first Trump administration, and there’s no reason to think that they need Mack. Everything he’s doing is with the intent of publicizing himself.”

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment about what, if any, role Mack or other sheriffs will play in helping to achieve campaign pledges to rid the United States of unauthorized migrants.

Trump promised mass deportations during his first term, but failed to achieve his goals. The average yearly total of deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2016 and 2020 was just over 300,000—a significant drop compared to the 380,000 people deported annually during Barack Obama’s presidency.

But during this election campaign, Trump and his allies made it clear that the scale and speed of the deportation plans for his second term would be on a different level.

“Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner who formalized the child separation policy alongside Homan during Trump’s first term, told The New York Times more than a year ago.