Illegal immigration is and always has been the central issue for Donald Trump‘s political career.
Railing against illegal immigration was how Trump distinguished himself, for better and worse, in the 2016 Republican primaries. A central factor in Trump’s 2024 win was the massive inflow of migrants across the border caused by the Biden administration’s boneheaded reversal of his policies.
It is no exaggeration to say that Trump is president because people wanted tough policies on illegal immigration.
So what will Trump do, and try to do, about illegal immigration in a second term?
First, he will try to mend the holes created by the Biden administration, which thoughtlessly invited millions of undocumented “asylum-seekers” and created a humanitarian crisis.
Second, he will stop the abuse of the executive branch’s selective enforcement power and other discretionary powers — those the Biden and Obama administrations used to effectively legalize illegal immigration and otherwise vastly liberalize immigration.
Third, he will try to shore up the border, possibly with military forces.
Finally, Trump’s biggest promise, and the one most upsetting to his critics, is what his former border boss Mark Morgan calls “large-scale removal policies” but is more commonly known as “mass deportation.”
Remain in Mexico again
Perhaps the most costly policy mistake of the Biden administration was its decision to scrap the agreements Trump had made with Central American leaders under which these allied countries agreed to take in migrants who were claiming asylum.
Called the “Remain in Mexico” and “Safe Third Country” agreements, these policies were crucial in stopping the massive flows of migrants to the southern border.
The millions who arrived at the U.S. border in the past decade were not mostly trying to sneak past the border guard into the U.S. interior. Instead, they typically presented themselves at the border and claimed to be seeking asylum from their home countries — Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, etc. And if they really were being persecuted in Colombia, there’s no reason they couldn’t stay in Panama.
These asylum-seekers, though, generally did not have valid claims. They were not being persecuted. They wanted to move to the United States for the reason most of the world wants to move here: America is the land of opportunity, with plentiful work and high wages. That is, they are economic migrants.
Economic migrants have always been part of America, and we welcome many on a daily basis, but they are supposed to get visas. The floods of migrants in recent years have instead claimed asylum because the patchwork of U.S. laws, court rulings, and enforcement decisions have made the system easy to abuse.
A migrant arrives at the border, claims asylum, and is given a court date. Because we do not have the capacity to safely hold all of these people at the border, the migrant typically is released into the U.S. awaiting that court date, which may be months in the future. At that point, there may be no way for law enforcement to find these migrants.
The “Remain in Mexico” agreement provided that asylum-seekers would stay south of the border while awaiting their U.S. hearing date. The intention wasn’t to house hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers in Mexico, it was to deter them from ever coming to the U.S. border.
If a Guatemalan man knows he doesn’t have a valid asylum case, he’s not going to cross 1,000 miles of Mexican desert to be turned away at the border and told to wait in Reynosa, Mexico. Trump largely solved the migrant crisis by hammering out these agreements.
Biden killed these agreements upon coming into office and thus induced millions of Central and South Americans to make the dangerous journey up to the Rio Grande.
Restoring these agreements will be the priority for the Trump administration. “He’s already threatened to use tariffs to get” the governments of Mexico and other Latin American countries “on board,” says Morgan, Trump’s former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.
Enforce the law, strengthen the border
Another Biden abuse that the Trump administration will likely end is the overuse of parole power for illegal immigrants.
Federal law grants the Homeland Security secretary the power to temporarily allow entry into the country by an otherwise inadmissible alien on a temporary “case-by-case basis for a significant public benefit.” But the Biden administration granted parole to whole classes of illegal immigrants, which Morgan argues is against the law.
Trump is likely, on Day One, to declare a national emergency at the border, as he did in 2019. Biden, upon taking office in 2021, revoked that declaration and, in the process, triggered an emergency at the border.
This designation would give the administration some leeway in quickly moving funds to border security measures.
Ken Cuccinelli, a senior Homeland Security official in the first Trump term, has called for “troops on the border.” The U.S. military has long cooperated with Border Patrol, providing logistical and technological resources — for instance, surveillance drones. Cuccinelli and Morgan argue that deploying some troops along the border would be within the bounds of precedent.
Mass deportations
The most controversial part of Trump’s illegal immigration plan is mass deportation.
More than 10 million foreigners are in the U.S. illegally, and the Biden administration has decided to do nearly nothing about that fact. Trump, logistically, cannot remove all of them, but his team hopes to deport many of them, thus encouraging many others to self-deport — and discouraging new entrants.
Cuccinelli says 1.3 million deportation orders are pending and that about 500,000 illegal immigrants have a criminal record. Finding and removing these lawbreakers would be the first step.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement would need to bring in reinforcements for such a massive project, as it has only about 6,000 officers who do removals. The U.S. Marshals and local sheriffs’ departments have experience in finding and catching lawbreakers, and many Trump allies have suggested they could aid in deportation efforts.
Sanctuary laws are an obvious roadblock to these efforts. Cuccinelli says Congress should cut off federal aid to sanctuary cities and counties until they agree to cooperate with ICE.
Another priority will be recent illegal entrants.
Cuccinelli and Morgan both emphasize that prioritizing felons or recent entrants doesn’t mean ignoring otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants. If ICE officers find a drug dealer here illegally, and he’s living in an apartment with four other illegal immigrants, Cuccinelli says, all of them can and should be removed.
The proper way to exercise discretion and compassion, Morgan argues, is to waive the standard bar on legal reentry. Ordinarily, someone deported for illegal entry cannot apply for a visa for years. If an otherwise law-abiding mother and her children are caught by ICE and are cooperative, Morgan says, the Department of Homeland Security can allow them to immediately apply to reenter legally.
Trump would never call it an “amnesty,” but the DHS could offer such a deal to everyone here illegally who leaves voluntarily: Self-deport and head straight to the U.S. Consulate to apply for a visa. Such a deal would become more attractive if it is known that ICE is deporting every illegal immigrant the agency comes across.
The common theme is that incentives are the key here. The first Trump administration reduced the incentives to come with its Remain in Mexico policy, and Trump can do so again in the second term. Rapid and efficient deportation can create another disincentive to enter and an incentive to leave voluntarily. A more robust wall with more surveillance and manpower along the border also can make the prospect of sneaking into the country less attractive.
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If the Trump policy on illegal immigration works well, it will not yield many arrests at the border and a constant flow of deportation. It will mean fewer people trying to enter illegally, fewer economic migrants claiming asylum, and those here illegally leaving on their own.
It’s not a vision of mass arrests and door-smashing, it’s a vision of law and order.