Trump 2.0: The Worst of the Worst
- Oct 27, 2025
- 27 min read
Updated: Oct 31, 2025
Welcome to my six-part series on immigration in the United States! I hope it will be a helpful tool for you as you navigate the confusing and contradictory messages we hear about this topic. I recommend reading the articles in the order listed, but you can do what you want. I'm not the boss of you.
Trump 2.0: The Worst of the Worst (this article)
During the Biden administration, the Trump movement had evolved. While some of the major characters, like Stephen Miller, were still in play, MAGA had added RFK Jr. and the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) moms to its lineup, along with Elon Musk. Additionally, Trump’s base had expanded to include more Hispanic and Black voters than in 2016. Many Americans of color found they could overlook Trump’s racist comments—or convince themselves those comments did not apply to them—because they liked other elements of the MAGA movement.
Some people who had voted for Biden in 2020 were bothered by government overreach and misinformation during the pandemic. Others were concerned about Biden’s mental acuity. But perhaps more than any specific policy differences between the two candidates, the MAGA spirit of “You’re not the boss of me” appealed to a lot of people, especially men. Trump won the election against Vice President Kamala Harris by 86 electoral college votes and 1.6 percent of the popular vote (about 2.3 million votes).
Remember Michael Scott and the snip snap? The second Trump administration (Trump 2.0, for short) immediately launched another round of that. Within his first month in office, Trump had rescinded seven of Biden’s executive orders regarding immigration and reinstated 27 of the immigration policies from his first term. He also added seven new orders. These were not small policies. They were big, big levers, being flung in the opposite direction yet again.
Although I provided only big-picture summaries of policy shifts for the Obama, Trump 1.0, and Biden administrations, we are going to carefully work through the Trump 2.0 changes, category by category. That’s because these policies are current, being played out around us right now. I want you to understand—really understand—what is happening.
We will discuss these categories in order of most to least impact:
Some of these categories overlap, but I’ve done my best to group them in a logical way.
Interior Enforcement
You’ve probably heard a lot about “catch-and-relase.” It does not have a specific technical definition, but it generally refers to letting people live their normal lives and occasionally check in with officials while their immigration case is processed rather than detaining them in a facility. Ending catch-and-release practices was a big part of Trump’s campaign.
To implement this plan, the administration has ordered ICE to apply 8 U.S. Code § 1225 to anyone without legal status they encounter within the country. This statute says that a person must be detained while their case goes through immigration court. Historically, it has applied only to people trying to cross the border illegally.
For those already present in the country for years, 8 U.S. Code § 1226 has always applied instead, meaning they could be released on bond while their case went through court, as long as they didn’t have a criminal record and didn’t pose a flight risk.
The administration has begun applying § 1225 to everyone, as in the case of Antonia Aguilar Maldonado, a woman who came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2016 at 16 years old. Aguilar Maldonado is now married and living in Minnesota with her two young children. She and her husband work as painters. It would be very hard to argue that she is “the worst of the worst.”
Still, she was arrested while leaving her house to go to work and put in jail. She asked to be released from jail on bond so she could nurse her youngest child and was denied.
This is happening everywhere. Some immigrants have successfully filed lawsuits against the administration. The judges in those cases (both Democratic and Republican judges, including Trump appointees) argued that processing everyone under § 1225 makes § 1226 meaningless. Additionally, it nullifies the part of the Laiken Riley Act that specifies which crimes mandate an illegal immigrant be detained rather than released on bond.
In other words, if we’re just going to detain everyone anyway, regardless of criminal charges, what’s the point of those laws? Congress can go through the process to change those laws if they want. But if we are going to apply them as they currently exist, ICE does not have the legal authority to disregard § 1226, judges have ruled.
(I learned about Aguilar Maldonado’s case from Gabe Fleischer’s reporting for The Preamble.)
Trump may be frustrated that the lever he tried to pull is not budging. Judges are ruling against him, people he had appointed in a sweeping remake of the immigration courts. Immigration judges, you may recall, are part of EOIR, which is within the DOJ, which is under the executive branch. Trump has fired over 80 immigration judges this year and has begun allowing any attorney to serve as an immigration judge, not just those with experience in immigration law. He is also attempting to remake the Board of Immigration Appeals; nine of its 13 members are now Trump appointees.
Immigration cases do not get out from under the control of the executive branch until they’ve moved beyond the Board of Immigration Appeals to a federal court. This is where Aguilar Maldonado’s case currently is. But even if she wins, that ruling will not apply nationwide, thanks to the Supreme Court decision earlier this year that limits the effect of district judges’ rulings to the single case for which they were issued. Some groups are currently pursuing class-action lawsuits, hoping to expand the application of district judges’ rulings in cases like this. (1)
One of the primary reasons administrations haven’t historically detained everyone without legal status is that it takes a ton of resources. You need places to put people and people to run the places. Quickly after taking office, the Trump administration began expanding detention space by co-opting prisons and jails, contracting with private groups like GEO Group and CoreCivic to reopen shuttered detention centers, utilizing military bases, and building new facilities.
Those facilities are filling up fast. On July 8, Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, issued a memo directing ICE agents to arrest anyone without legal status, regardless of whether or not they have a criminal history. As a result, over 70 percent of people currently detained by ICE (as of August 2025) have no criminal history and 93 percent have never been convicted of a violent crime. Many of them have resided in the country for decades and were taken from their homes or workplaces with no warning. Many have no access to legal representation or contact with their families. Many of these facilities are overcrowded, unsafe, and poorly run.
These detentions are the partial manifestation of Trump’s broad order to DHS to focus its investigative arm (HSI) on “the enforcement of the provisions of the INA and other Federal laws related to the illegal entry and unlawful presence of aliens in the United States.” In other words, their job is now to enforce any and every immigration violation rather than focus on transnational crime that affects the safety of the country.
Another strategy the administration is using to increase apprehensions is permitting ICE agents to apprehend people in churches, schools, hospitals, healthcare centers, food banks, and relief agencies. For the previous fifteen years, these were considered “sensitive areas” and ICE was not allowed to make arrests in them. Despite this policy change, there have been very few reports of ICE making arrests in sensitive areas this year.
While immigration enforcement is explicitly the responsibility of the federal government, laws about how things are supposed to work between local and federal officials aren’t super black and white. Basically, they say that local officials can’t obstruct federal officials from enforcing immigration laws, but neither are they required by law to help federal officials. State and local governments have been kept on their toes the last ten years trying to stay abreast of executive orders while managing their own jurisdictions as they best see fit.
On Trump’s first day in office, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove issued a memo stating that local officials would be punished for not cooperating with federal enforcement efforts. This order was designed to eliminate “sanctuary jurisdictions”—the entire state of California, for example—where local officials have previously refused to assist federal immigration officials.
Indeed, the DOJ filed lawsuits against New York City and threatened Louisville, Kentucky, for not cooperating sufficiently with ICE. When someone has been put in jail for a crime and has a "detainer" issued against them by DHS for being unlawfully present in the country, the DOJ expects local law enforcement to hold that individual for 48 hours to give federal law enforcement time to take custody of them. Since 2017, the Louisville Metro Corrections department had been notifying the DOJ only five to 12 hours before releasing inmates with a detainer.
Louisville ended up dropping its sanctuary status in response to threats from the DOJ. Its mayor, Craig Greenberg, explained that he made this decision because he did not want the city to lose federal funding for food, rental assistance, and medical care for its citizens. Better to let ICE have their way with a few criminals than tempt them to do a hostile military-style raid on ordinary citizens, he reasoned. Greenberg's decision was met with criticism by some Democrats and immigration advocates, who felt he was caving to political pressure and not acting in the best interest of his city.
The Senate Judiciary Committee expressed concern over the policy of bringing charges against local law enforcement to Attorney General Pam Bondi, stating that using DOJ resources to prosecute local law enforcement is a misuse of resources that does not make the country any safer:
We are deeply disturbed that the Department is redirecting resources from the prosecution of violent crimes to the pursuit of dubious claims against so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Multiple studies have shown that localities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement do not have higher crime rates. Reassigning law enforcement officers to ill-defined immigration-focused initiatives, for which they have no expertise, and instructing prosecutors to investigate and potentially pursue charges against sanctuary jurisdictions will not successfully target those who pose an actual threat to public safety.
This conflict continues to unfold across the country. Some local jurisdictions are happy to support the federal government’s immigration efforts. Others feel it distracts them from doing their actual jobs of protecting their communities. I imagine individual officers within each community feel differently about it as well, based on their own experiences and worldviews.
Closely related to sanctuary jurisdictions is the issue of information sharing. Beginning in 2014, DHS began expanding efforts to share information across many agencies for the purposes of immigration enforcement. Those efforts were stepped up in 2018 through the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Initiative (LEISI). One of the major goals of both Trump administrations has been to open lines of communication across all federal, state, and local agencies regarding individuals’ immigration status and other information.
From one angle, this makes sense. More information sharing makes it harder for criminals to move freely. On the other hand, mandating every agency at every level to participate in immigration enforcement blurs the lines of who is responsible for what. It makes teachers, healthcare providers, tax collectors, DMV clerks—just about everyone, really—into law enforcement officers. It also can and has violated people’s right to privacy and disrupts our established laws for due process.
Illegal immigrants have long been prohibited from receiving most federal public benefits. However, in July, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., issued a statement expanding what counts as federal benefits that illegal immigrants are not eligible for. The new list includes things like Head Start and adult technical career training. That means school administrators enrolling children in preschool must ask for verification of their legal status, and turn away children who can’t provide it. It also makes it harder for adults without legal status to work.
During the Biden administration, over 450,000 UACs arrived through the southern border. Biden revoked the contract mandating that UAC sponsors be DNA tested. Thousands of these children had been placed with legitimate family sponsors, but some of the sponsors were bad people posing as sponsors in order to exploit the children for labor or sex trafficking. The second Trump administration has restarted DNA testing for sponsors of unaccompanied minors (UACs) to make sure children are placed with people they are actually related to.
Thorough vetting of sponsors is crucial to prevent children from being placed with predators or traffickers—a known problem that had increased during the Biden years. But it can also be a trap to catch undocumented adults who are legitimately related to the children and actively caring for them. When those caregivers are detained or deported, UACs are stranded in an incredibly vulnerable situation, placed in detention centers and left to navigate a complex system without a guardian. What’s more, the administration cut contracts with organizations that provided legal representation to UACs. They quickly rescinded this order, then later reinstated it. Currently, it is temporarily blocked by the courts. (Snip snap.)
The loss of legal representation for UACs is coming into play as the administration, in early October, launched an initiative to entice UACs ages 14 and older in HHS custody to self-deport. These children are being told they’ll be given $2,500 once they are resettled in their home country (children from Mexico do not qualify).
Returning to their home country may be the best option for some children. However, this policy intentionally short-circuits the process that allows that decision to be made in an informed way with appropriate adult direction. In the United States, we believe children should not make big decisions—like getting medical care, enlisting in the military, driving, or getting married—without adult guidance and permission. Additionally, we have many legal provisions that protect UACs from deportation, like the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Children are unlikely to be aware of these options without legal guidance.
When I was a teenager, I barely had the wherewithal to go to the post office by myself, let alone navigate a complex legal situation that would determine the course of my entire life in a nonnative language and without a lawyer. If I were in that situation, I’d sure be tempted by the promise of $2,500. Trump’s DHS knows the money will be especially tempting for these vulnerable kids.
It’s not just UACs who have lost legal representation. The DOJ also ordered a halt to funding for organizations that provide legal representation to adult detained immigrants. This order was overturned in a lawsuit a month later.
Adults are also being enticed to self-deport. When I was in the airport in Lynchburg, Virginia, in September, I saw a sign—all in Spanish—in the security line offering people $1,000 per family member, in addition to free flights, to deport themselves out of the country: “If you are found in the United States without legal status, now is the time to leave.”
The sign promised the U.S. would grant forgiveness of immigration penalties in exchange for voluntary departure. It did not explain that voluntary departure can trigger a three- or ten-year ban on reentering the United States. Finally, it ended with, “If you don't self-deport, ICE will continue to prioritize your removal. This may include prosecution, detention, fines, and removal.”
Another way the administration is trying to make enforcement of their immigration policies a little easier on themselves is by requiring noncitizens (with a few exceptions) to self-register with the federal government, including fingerprinting. This is not a new policy, as all immigrants and visitors are supposed to be registered in the process of entering the country. Essentially, USCIS is asking people who somehow avoided registering when they first entered to turn themselves in.
Bumping up against the very real limits of detaining massive numbers of people, the administration is also seeking to speed up deportations. Typically, people have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge before they can be forcibly removed from the country. This can be overridden with “expedited removal,” meaning ICE or CBP can remove someone almost immediately, with no hearing.
Under George W. Bush, expedited removal could only be used for certain people who had been in the country less than 14 days and were apprehended within 100 miles of the border. During his first term, Trump changed the time to two years and got rid of the 100-miles rule. Biden changed it back and then—snip snap—Trump changed it back again.
All this investigating, detaining, and deporting takes lots of manpower. At the beginning of his administration, Trump set a goal to hire 10,000 new ICE officers and 3,000 new Border Patrol agents. By August 2025, ICE had received over 100,000 applications. An ICE career expo held in Dallas, Texas resulted in 1,000 tentative job offers.
(For reference, ICE already had about 20,000 employees and CBP already had 19,000 Border Patrol agents.)
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (aka OBBBA aka H.R. 1) includes about $30 billion for ICE to be used at their discretion for hiring and operations. Many are concerned that hiring quotas and rushed timelines will result in unqualified hires, including people who will accept bribes from smugglers and traffickers.
When I was researching ICE, BP, and CBP, I saw a recruiting ad on the official CBP website that said, “Adrenaline rush comes standard.” Recruiting people who are in it for the adrenaline rush, not for keeping people safe, has the potential to create an enforcement agency that is increasingly arbitrary, capricious, and unjust.
Humanitarian Protections and Asylum Seekers
By far the biggest swell of immigration numbers under the Biden administration was in this category. Around 5.8 million people entered the country during the Biden years under some sort of temporary provision. The bulk of these were humanitarian parolees or asylum seekers waiting for their cases to be processed. These people were not illegal immigrants, but they did not have secure legal status either.
One of the first orders of the Trump 2.0 administration was to undo the rules that had allowed these people to remain in the country.
Benjamine Huffman, acting director of DHS, authorized officials to deport over one million people who had come under humanitarian parole. Trump, arguing that Biden had abused the intent of humanitarian parole, ended broad use of those programs, effectively dissolving the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ukraine, and Afghanistan. They were told to self-deport or apply for some other status, like asylum, or else they would be deported.
To bring it back to the ski resort metaphor, ending humanitarian parole programs would be like if someone had purchased a 5-day lift ticket for Monday through Friday, and on Tuesday, they got an email saying their lift ticket was no longer valid. In the email, the resort manager explained this decision was made because he thought the previous manager had sold too many 5-day passes. He told customers they needed to immediately leave the resort, or else get in the back of the line at the office to buy a new lift ticket (but also, all the lift tickets were likely sold out).
Additionally, the administration revoked Temporary Protected Status for 348,202 Venezuelans and 348,187 Haitians, as well as thousands of people from Honduras, Nepal, Afghanistan, Cameroon, and Nicaragua, stating that those countries no longer met the conditions for TPS designation. TPS is a program that allows people from certain countries to live and work legally in the U.S. for a limited time when their home country is experiencing an environmental disaster or ongoing armed conflict. Like the humanitarian parolees, these people were told to self-deport or apply for a different status.
DHS also cancelled 30,000 appointments made through the CBP One app by asylum seekers. Those people were not yet in the country. Most of them were waiting in Mexico for their scheduled appointment since a federal judge had ordered the reinstatement of MPP (“Remain in Mexico”) toward the end of the Biden administration, but this action eliminated any possibility that they’d be able to come.
Humanitarian parolees are now subject to the same risks—detention and deportation—as illegal immigrants. The Trump administration has dramatically ramped up efforts to find, arrest, and deport anyone without secure legal status living within the country, even those who had arrived through legal means.
Refugees
As you may recall from the Immigration Explainer, refugees go through a different process than asylum seekers, although they are both fleeing their home countries out of fear for their lives.
Rather than presenting themselves at the U.S. border like asylum seekers, refugees apply for refugee status from their home country or a third-party country through the UNHCR. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) within the State Department manages how many refugee spots are available and for which countries.
On his first day in office, Trump suspended the refugee admission program indefinitely, stating that many cities had been overwhelmed with refugees during the Biden administration. Over 100,000 refugees who had already been approved and had booked travel to the U.S. were forced to cancel flights and remain in the countries from which they were fleeing. This suspension has been challenged in courts, but thus far has not been overruled.
The executive order not only stopped processing cases, it stopped all efforts and funding for resettling refugees, including coordination with private groups like the Welcome Corps. Not only did this leave thousands of refugees stranded overseas, it left thousands who were already here without the necessary legal and logistical support to integrate into society.
To press the issue even further, Trump spoke at the UN General Assembly on Sept 23, 2025, urging other world leaders to join him in reducing protections for global refugees. These refugees come from severe conflict and disaster areas all over the world, like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Myanmar. In mid-October, Trump set the refugee cap for 2026 at 7,500, the lowest level in U.S. history.
There has been one bright exception to Trump’s no-refugees policy: a group of Afrikaners (white South Africans) had their cases processed quickly and were flown on a chartered plane to the United States in early May. The administration argued that they were making an exception to their refugee policy because these people were experiencing racially based genocide in South Africa. That’s fine, except for two things: 1) claims of racially based genocide were not true, and 2) the administration has not accepted any other refugees who are facing similar threats in their home countries.
So why were the Afrikaners allowed in, but no other refugees were? According to Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, they had shown their ability to assimilate into American culture—an important part of any refugee or immigrant admission, according to Trump’s new executive orders:
And the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.
While previous administrations have always focused on national security and public safety in refugee admissions, Trump’s addition of friendliness to American “culture” as a litmus test was new. It begs the question: What is American culture?
He can’t be talking about Christian faith—otherwise we’d be letting in a lot more people from Mexico, Russia, the Philippines, Ukraine, and Venezuela. It can’t be a good work ethic; otherwise, we’d be letting in as many people as possible at the U.S.-Mexico border, whose number one reason for coming is to work.
What is it, then, that separated these Afrikaner refugees from all the other refugees the administration has blocked? There is a clue in Landau’s welcome speech:
“As you know—a lot of you I think are farmers, right—when you have quality seeds, you can put them in foreign soil and they will blossom. They will bloom…we are excited to welcome you here to our country where we think you will bloom.”
It’s so un-subtle. What qualifies them to assimilate into American culture is their whiteness. Remember Stephen Miller, Trump’s advisor who is super worried about white people becoming outnumbered and overpowered in America? He is the mastermind here. One part of the strategy is encouraging native-born Americans to have more babies, as Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk were famous for doing. A supplemental strategy is to import more white people and stop importing people of color.
Excepting the 68 Afrikaners who were welcomed with open arms, the Trump administration has struck a terrible blow to tens of thousands of refugees, including many Christians persecuted for their faith.
Visa Processing (coming legally for a temporary stay)
Vetting has always been part of the process of granting visas (a piece of paper giving someone permission to be in the country), but the Trump administration has moved to dramatically increase vetting of visa applicants. In addition to the fingerprinting that has been in place, USCIS will start collecting iris scans, palm prints, DNA, and voice prints. Using these biometrics, they plan to continuously, automatically vet all noncitizens.
DHS has also proposed a rule to cap certain visa types (students; researchers and exchange program participants; and international media) at four years. This proposal is still under discussion and has not yet taken effect.
As of August 21, 2025, there were 55 million people with valid visas present in the United States. The administration is reviewing all those visas, including work and student visas, for any violations of visa terms. As part of their review tactics, the State Department has begun requiring international students to make their social media profiles public so they can be scrutinized for “hostile attitudes.” They are also looking for anyone who is a threat to the labor force.
Over 6,000 students have already had their visas revoked, losing their legal right to be present in the country. Some of these were reportedly for legal violations such as assault, burglary, or driving under the influence. But most of the attention has been on students who allegedly supported terrorist organizations—specifically, those who have participated in pro-Palestine demonstrations.
In June, the administration stopped granting work visas to commercial truck drivers due to concerns that a lack of proficiency in English had led to trucking accidents. The move is intended to make roads safer, but will no doubt be tough for many businesses, as there is already a shortage of about 60,000 commercial truck drivers.
One change that is noteworthy, but limited in scope, is that the State Department now requires a refundable visa bond of $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 for B1 and B2 visitors from Malawi or Zambia and restricts those entries to three specific airports. While the promise of this bond is that the visitor gets it back after they leave the U.S., its effect is to stop people from coming from these countries at all. If you live in Zambia and have to pay $10,000 USD on top of travel expenses to come to the U.S., you most likely aren’t going to bother coming.
Malawi and Zambia were the first countries to be targeted with these bonds because they have historically high rates of visitors who overstay their visas. However, that is as a percentage; we don’t have that many people who come from these countries to begin with. Many expect this policy to be expanded to other countries in the future.
Finally, applicants for the Diversity Visa (the least common way to legally enter the U.S.) now must have a passport when they apply. In the past, you only had to get a passport once you had been selected in the lottery and were making travel plans. This requirement means people will have to spend the time and money to get a passport they may never need. Between 10 and 20 million people apply for the Diversity Visa each year, but only around 50,000 are accepted. This new regulation will likely demotivate many people from applying.
Foreign Relations
All the people ICE and BP need to deport under the new regulations have to go somewhere. As part of implementing his immigration policies, the Trump administration has struck deals with leaders of other countries to receive U.S. deportees.
In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele that the U.S. can send violent criminal illegal immigrants, not only from El Salvador, but from any country, to El Salvador. Bukele said he will happily, for a fee, host these deportees in his Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison known for its severe human and civil rights violations. The fee wouldn’t be too expensive for the U.S., Bukele said, but it would be enough money to make his country’s entire prison system sustainable.
This agreement is threatening to move beyond the realm of immigration, as Bukele also said he’d be happy to imprison not just undocumented immigrants, but U.S. citizens and permanent residents as well. This is unequivocally illegal. You can’t just ship Americans, even American criminals, off to other countries to be imprisoned.
Rubio later said, “There are obviously legalities involved. We have a constitution, we have all sorts of things, but it’s a very generous offer.” Trump is, for the moment, blocked from taking Bukele up on his offer, but has not ruled it out.
“If we had the legal right to do it, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” he said. “I don’t know that we do. We’re looking at it right now.”
Colombia was, at first, less willing than El Salvador to receive deportees. But Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo caved after Trump threatened severe tariffs against Colombia. The Trump administration has since made deportation agreements with almost a dozen third-party countries, meaning the U.S. can send people to countries that aren’t even where they came from.
How has the administration been able to skirt due process for deporting people? By invoking the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, a wartime provision (previously only used in the War of 1812, World War 1, and World War II) that allows the U.S. to immediately remove anyone from a foreign nation or government that is participating in "any qualifying invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”
By designating Tren de Aragua (TdA), MS-13, and drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and making an emergency declaration that the U.S. is under invasion by these groups, the administration authorized itself to immediately apprehend, restrain, secure, and remove, without judicial review, “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States.”
Skipping the judicial review step means that people can be put on a plane and sent away on the basis of, for example, tattoos that an ICE officer suspects might be related to TdA. These orders were immediately challenged in courts on the grounds that individuals arriving to the U.S. from Venezuela do not constitute an invasion and that TdA is not a foreign nation or government.
Designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations also, in Trump’s opinion, authorizes him to wage war on them without Congressional approval. In early September, the U.S. Navy blew up a 30-foot boat just off the coast of Venezuela that was reportedly headed for Trinidad carrying cocaine and fentanyl. The strike destroyed the cargo and killed eleven people who were allegedly members of Tren de Aragua. Since that strike, the U.S. has placed eight warships, a submarine, and Marine forces in the water near Venezuela and executed several more strikes, killing an additional sixteen people.
Historically—and legally, many would argue—designating a group as a foreign terrorist organization gives the U.S. authority to use sanctions against them, not to immediately blow them up. Drug traffickers have traditionally been viewed as criminals, not enemy combatants. They’ve been intercepted by the Coast Guard, apprehended, and sent to trial for their crimes. This administration’s approach toward Caribbean drug traffickers of “kill now, ask questions later” is unprecedented and carries the risk of alienating allies and stirring up actual war.
The Border
One of the most common refrains from Trump and his supporters during the Biden administration was that Biden had presided over an open border, with people flowing across it indiscriminately. This wasn’t actually true—the Biden administration turned away millions of people at the border, and the record high crossings at ports of entry had settled down by significantly by 2024—but going into the 2024 election, a majority of Americans still felt uneasy about the border.
Within his first couple days in office, Trump issued several executive orders aimed at securing the border. First, he declared a national emergency at the border: “Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans,” representing “a grave threat to our Nation.” Declaring a national emergency unlocks special powers, allowing the president to bypass normal procedures and checks on executive power.
Second, he defined the situation as an invasion, stating that “the sheer number of aliens entering the United States has overwhelmed the system and rendered many of the INA’s provisions ineffective…millions of aliens who potentially pose significant threats to health, safety, and national security have moved into communities nationwide.”
By declaring the emergency and the invasion, Trump gave himself permission to make securing the border part of the military’s core mission. He ordered the Secretary of Defense to submit a plan assigning “United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) the mission to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States.” This was a departure from the designated role of the military. Normally, border control falls to the Department of Homeland Security, as we saw in the Immigration Explainer.
As part of the plan for the military to secure the border, the administration sent additional troops and Stryker vehicles to the southern border. Since the military is not technically allowed to do border enforcement, like detaining migrants, Trump established two new “National Defense Areas”—essentially pop-up military bases—so that military troops assigned to guard the base can detain anyone entering those areas until Border Patrol comes and takes over.
The emergency declaration also allowed the administration to allocate money to resume building the border wall. They secured two new contracts with companies to build 7 miles of wall in Hidalgo County, Texas, and 27 miles of wall in Santa Cruz County, Arizona. Additionally, they waived dozens of environmental laws to expedite building in southern California and bypassed environmental regulations to begin building 36 miles of wall in Arizona and New Mexico. When H.R. 1 (OBBBA) was passed several months later, an additional $46.5 billion was earmarked to complete the wall.
One sticking point with the border wall has been that much of the land along the border, particularly in Texas, is privately owned. Although many Texas landowners support Trump, they are squeamish about giving up their property to the federal government. The administration is attempting to use eminent domain to acquire the necessary private land to continue construction of the wall.
In addition to deploying the military, Trump has authorized some state and local officers to perform immigration enforcement. He made an agreement with Texas Governor Greg Abbot that the Texas National Guard can detain and deport undocumented people. Remember, the National Guard is composed of people who do military training one weekend a month and two weeks a year in addition to their civilian job or school. It is generally commanded by the state, but can be utilized by the federal government in times of emergency.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared state support for Trump’s deportation plan and encouraged local police departments to enter 287(g) agreements with the federal government, deputizing local officers to do immigration enforcement work. Essentially, a 287(g) agreement is the opposite of a sanctuary jurisdiction; local officials agree to actively participate with ICE in apprehending people for immigration violations.
Citizenship
The Trump administration has not only sought to make it more difficult to become a citizen, but also to end birthright citizenship for children born to parents without legal status or who are just visiting temporarily. In an executive order titled, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” Trump cites the Fourteenth Amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
Trump’s argument, borrowed from his lawyer friends like Michael Anton and John Eastman, is that children born to undocumented or temporarily visiting parents are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and thus do not qualify as citizens. This order was immediately challenged in court.
The phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” has always been interpreted to mean that the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to children born to foreign diplomats living in the United States, as those diplomats are subject to the jurisdiction of their home country.
If indeed children born to undocumented or visiting parents are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, then U.S. law enforcement has no authority to detain or deport them. You can’t have it both ways, according to the original intent and historical application of the Fourteenth Amendment.
A district judge barred enforcement nationwide, but the Supreme Court later ruled that the district judge lacked that authority. The Supreme Court has not yet considered the actual case, but the Trump administration has asked them to put it on their agenda for this year.
In a tradition started by FDR and picked up again by Obama, all new citizens receive a letter from the president. It is a matter of ceremony, not law. While both Trump’s letter and previous presidents’ letters emphasize welcome, the responsibilities of citizenship, and national pride, Trump’s new letter reveals a key difference between his view of immigrants and the views of previous presidents.
Biden’s letter focused on applauding immigrants for their courage and expressing gratitude to them for choosing America:
The idea of America is that everyone is created equal and deserves to be treated equally and that we are forever a Nation of possibilities. Since our nation’s founding, that idea—the source of our strength and dynamism—has been nurtured, enriched, and advanced by the contributions, sacrifices, and dreams of generations of immigrants like you.
In other words, “We are glad you are bringing your full self here to participate in our form of government.”
Trump’s letter, by contrast, emphasizes new citizens’ responsibility to align themselves with American traditions, history, culture, and values:
Our history is now your history. Our customs are now your customs. And our Constitution is now yours to safeguard, honor, and respect…We applaud your devotion to our country, our people, our history, and our great American story. As long as the American people continue to love our country and uphold our values, there is nothing that our nation cannot achieve.
In other words, “We’re glad you’re here, as long as you promise to be like us.”
Finally, Trump has expanded the categories of people targeted for denaturalization (revoking of citizenship) and directed more resources towards denaturalization cases. In the past, denaturalization has been limited to cases where a person became a citizen based on false information or through an improper process. This expansion will additionally target those who furthered the interests of gangs or cartels; those who committed human trafficking offenses; those who committed crimes of fraud; and those who obtained naturalization through fraud or government corruption.
In other words, it is an attempt to use the revocation of citizenship as part of the criminal justice system.
Crime
On January 29, 2025, Trump signed the Laiken Riley Act. This is a two-part law inspired by Laiken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was murdered in February 2024 by Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant. Ibarra had entered the country illegally in September 2022 and been released by ICE while his case was being processed. He had then reportedly been arrested in New York City in September 2023 for "acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation" and had been released. However, NYPD maintains that there is no record of Ibarra’s arrest.
The first part of the Laiken Riley Act requires DHS to detain anyone who is in the country illegally and has been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting. The second part allows states to sue the federal government for failing to properly enforce immigration laws—specifically, in the ways Trump believes Biden failed to enforce immigration laws, such as granting humanitarian parole on a broad scale rather than a case-by-case basis.
Finally, Trump reestablished the Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office to serve victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants. VOICE had been established during Trump 1.0. Biden had refashioned it as the Victims Engagement and Services Line (VESL) to serve victims of all crimes, regardless of the legal status of the victim or perpetrator.
Conclusion
It’s hard to quantify executive action precisely, because one executive order might require dozens of internal memos and directives to carry it out. But the bottom line is that Trump 1.0 escalated use of executive power regarding immigration, then Biden escalated it even further (generally reversing Trump 1.0’s policies), then Trump 2.0 escalated it even further (generally reversing Biden’s policies and adding more).
Although I’m sure you saw my opinions leaking through, I’ve tried to present the immigration policies of the past four presidential administrations in a truthful, informative way. Next, we’ll move into analysis. What have the effects of these policies been? Have they been good or bad for the country? Where do we go from here?
Analysis & Action (next article)
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