Trump's call for mass deportations runs into messy realities

NEW YORK -- In one of his first forays into policy as a presidential candidate, Republican Donald Trump calls for the deportation of all 11 million people estimated to be living in the country illegally while allowing the "really good people" to return.

It's a plan Trump offers with few specifics -- and one complicated by the messy realities of the nation's immigration system.

Such an effort may be more difficult than Trump realizes, because deporting so many people means finding them first. The government does not know the identities of many of the millions of people who have come into the country illegally or remained after their legally issued visas expired. Locating immigrants who don't have a legal immigration status has stymied officials for decades.

Deporting them all "is impractical and is opposed by a large majority of Americans," said Clint Bolick, an Arizona lawyer who co-authored a book on immigration policy with former Florida governor Jeb Bush, himself a GOP presidential candidate.

During an interview Wednesday on CNN, Trump said the "good ones" could return via an "expedited" process and then remain in the country legally.

The billionaire businessman and former reality television star has shot to the top of polls in the crowded race for the Republican presidential nomination, in large part because of his hard-line stance on immigration.

"I want to move 'em out, and we're going to move 'em back in and let them be legal," he told CNN.

As for his plans for the "bad ones," Trump said: "We have a lot of bad dudes, as I said. We have a lot of really bad people here. I want to get the bad ones out. ... And, by the way, and they're never coming back."

But Trump dodged questions in the interview about how he would locate those he wants to deport. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks declined to answer questions Thursday about that process or how much it might cost.

The nation's immigration courts already face a yearslong backlog of more than 451,000 deportation cases.