'Terrorized': Expert says Trump is relying on fear to fulfill his biggest campaign promise

President-elect Donald Trump is counting on panic to achieve what his administration cannot do alone — keep the primary promise of his presidential campaign, according to a legal expert.

Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, detailed in a New York Times editorial Thursday the many ways Trump is counting on fear to overcome the hurdles of mounting a mass deportation program.

"The government will do things that hurt people," wrote Lind. "It will do things that look scary. But how many people will be caught up in a deportation machine, and how quickly, is by no means a settled question."

Lind detailed the many challenges Trump will face in mounting a mass deportation program even if he is willing to break the law to make it happen.

The big one is the price tag.

"The constraints on a mass deportation operation are logistical more than legal," wrote Lind. "Deporting one million people a year would cost an annual average of $88 billion, and a one-time effort to deport the full unauthorized population of 11 million would cost many times that."

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Trump will also need facilities that have yet to be built, staff yet to be hired, and the compliance of foreign nations willing to accept the millions of people he's planned to deport — and who may not grant it, Lind argued.

Such serious problems plagued deportation efforts mounted in the 1930s and the 1950s that purported to remove masses of people but, according to Lind, relied on public relations to create the illusion of success.

"Both entailed horrific conditions for those caught and deported, and the tearing apart of families with claims to both the United States and other countries," Lind wrote.

"But in both cases, the federal government ultimately took credit for 'deporting' some people it never actually laid hands on — those who had been pressured or terrorized into leaving."

This is why Lind believes Trump is banking on fear — hoping that people without citizenship will be so frightened of deportation at his hands they'll flee by their own means.

This is also why Lind urges those who condemn Trump's campaign of mass deportation do what they can to support undocumented people in their local communities.

Document cases when the government breaks the law, pressures local officials not to collaborate, objects to armed forces being deployed in the states and support legal representation for immigrants, Lind urged.

"[It] starts with a committed and cleareyed understanding of what is actually happening, and a willingness to treat abuses of power as a rupture and an aberration — something that can, and should, be fought," Lind wrote.

"This work will require, particularly for those who are not themselves immigrants, a promise not to let pessimism do the Trump administration’s job for it."