YUMA, AZ — During the 2024 presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump, who won Arizona by 5.5% in November, campaigned on stricter immigration and border security policies, like mass deportations, which his transition team has outlined in recent weeks.
ABC15 wanted to follow up with Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls, who supported President-elect Trump in this past election, and also in 2016 and 2020, to get his take on how his city would prepare for such an operation.
Mayor Nicholls acknowledges that the situation at the border is better than it was one year ago, but says the numbers are still much higher than they were during previous administrations.
"There is still a great disparity...You're comparing apples to oranges," Mayor Nicholls explains.
In March, ABC15 was in Yuma for our 48 Hours on the Border special, where we canvassed parts of the Yuma Sector, which covers 126 miles of rugged border, from the Imperial Sand Dunes to the western edge of Pima County.
ABC15 first spoke with Mayor Nicholls in May 2023, just days before Title 42 came to an end. At the time, Mayor Nicholls said the Biden Administration's response to what was happening at the border was, "woefully inadequate."
Over the summer, President Biden issued several executive actions, resulting in tougher asylum rules. According to recent data released by CBP, apprehensions are at their lowest level in four years— while it is an improvement, critics have said the White House took too long to act.
Mayor Nicholls also explains that while the number of migrants being apprehended has decreased in the Yuma Sector, Border Patrol agents are transporting migrants from other, busier areas like the San Diego and Tucson sectors so that they can be processed in Yuma.
As we near the beginning of a second Trump term, ABC15 wanted to check back in with Mayor Nicholls to see what he thought of the President-elect's immigration proposals, starting with mass deportations.
"We have to have a change in policy," explains Mayor Nicholls. "We have to have something...It's tough to say you support one thing without knowing what all the details look like, but if people truly have been determined to not be in the country legally, they need to be deported and that's what needs to happen."
As far as involving the Yuma Police Department with proposed mass deportations, Mayor Nicholls says he'd also wait to hear the details on what exactly that looks like as well. For example, he says his officers already assist Border Patrol and CBP agents with things like site security but also underscored that mass deportations would be a "federal action, and needs to be done by federal agents."
And when it comes to the possibility of deporting minors or entire families, Mayor Nicholls admits those are more difficult cases with a number of factors to consider.
"I don't know that there is a single brush you can paint with," he explains. "As long as there is due process and people are going through the deportation process, I think that's what we need to focus on."
Various estimates suggest that 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants are currently living in the United States. Critics argue deporting such a large number of people would be virtually impossible.
The Trump Administration has vowed to begin deporting people who have committed crimes but has not ruled out the possibility of expanding the deportations after that. Mayor Nicholls says he is committed to working with the Trump Administration - and also with Democrats like Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, stating that at the end of the day, his job is to do what he feels is best for the city.
