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– By Ava Benach

The American people have spoken loudly and clearly and have elected Donald Trump to return to the White House in 2025. Trump made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, using racist, derogatory and dangerous language to describe immigrants while promising a slew of anti-immigrant policies. It would be folly not to take them seriously.

The First Trump Term: A Dangerous Time for Immigrants

The first Trump term was a dangerous one for immigrants. While humanitarian catastrophes like the Muslim Ban, Remain in Mexico, and Family Separation policies dominated the headlines, hundreds of less visible changes to the immigration system sowed chaos, confusion, and heartache for immigrants. Trump’s Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III issued decisions overriding precedent caselaw to close asylum availability to victims of domestic violence and people who were attacked due to their family relationships. They enhanced a culture of hostility against applicants for immigration benefits. They established a unit to strip people of citizenship. They imposed roadblocks in just about every path to legal status in the US.

Resistance and Legal Battles

However, immigrants, advocates, and lawyers fought back and went to battle, bringing lawsuits to curb and curtail some of the administration’s worst policies. Courts stopped the Trump administration from completely ending DACA and revoking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. They also preserved access to asylum for thousands. Massive public outcry ended family separation.

Why the Second Term Could Be Worse

While we gained valuable experience and became a more battle-tested group during the Trump administration, the administration itself has also learned. They will have three advantages during their second term that they didn’t in their first.

Unrestrained Leadership: No Moderating Forces

The first advantage is that the moderating forces on Trump have been eliminated and sidelined. The fact that Trump leaned hard into anti-immigrant rhetoric in the campaign demonstrates that he and his team believe Americans want a harsh immigration policy. Whether or not they are correct about the public’s views, though I fear they are, does not matter. It is how they will govern.

A More Compliant Judiciary

Second, they have installed a far more compliant judiciary than the one that existed in 2017. From the Supreme Court to district courts, many judges now seem to have taken an oath to Donald Trump rather than the Constitution and the law.

Control of Congress and Governmental Bodies

Finally, Congress and other governmental bodies will likely be in the hands of MAGA, meaning that anti-immigrant legislation can be passed and lessen the need for Trump to rely on executive orders.

What Can We Expect from Trump’s Administration?

So what can we expect Trump’s administration to do?

End DACA and Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

More than 1 million people in the U.S. have employment authorization and protection from deportation by DACA and TPS. Nearly all these people have been here for many years and have homes, families, and careers. In his first term, courts turned aside Trump’s sloppy efforts to eliminate both DACA and TPS. Trump has vowed to get rid of these programs and can be expected to approach it in a more thorough way that will survive the disinterested scrutiny of his judges.

“Mass Deportation”

Trump has promised mass deportation. Right now, U.S. policy regarding deportation is to focus on recent border crossers and immigrants with criminal convictions in the interior of the U.S. Immigrants who have lived here for years without incident and without status have not been a priority for deportation enforcement. A quick change that would take effect is that immigration agents would be instructed to seek to deport every undocumented immigrant they come across. In addition, the administration would use tactics such as mass roundups in workplaces, apartment buildings, hospitals, churches, and other places where undocumented people are believed to be found in great numbers. Third, they will use expansive and relatively unused statutes such as the Alien Enemies Act and the expedited removal authority to seek to deport immigrants quickly without bringing them before immigration courts. Fourth, they will expand detention facilities to hold immigrants until they can be deported. Finally, they will turn all police and other law enforcement agencies, including certain state militias, into quasi-immigration agents to increase their forces.

Muslim Ban, Redux

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, permitted Trump’s original Muslim ban to continue, which shut down immigration from six Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. While in place, families were split up with little hope of prompt reunification. There was chaos at airports as immigration officials tried to interpret Trump’s orders. President Biden rescinded the ban on his first day in office. Trump has vowed to restore it.

End Birthright Citizenship

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: “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.” It became the law of the land in 1868. Thirty years later, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the US Supreme Court ruled that a child born in the US to foreign parents is a citizen of the US. Since 1898, this principle has not been seriously debated. However, a number of Trumpist lawyers have sought to argue that Wong Kim Ark was wrong and the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” language in the 14th Amendment means that the architects of the amendment did not intend to give citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. Interestingly, one of the most well-known proponents of this theory is John Eastman, the legal guru of the January 6 insurrection and a currently disbarred lawyer who is a favorite of Donald Trump.

How such an effort would work is very unclear. One possibility is an executive order by Trump instructing federal agencies, such as the passport agency and the US Citizenship & Immigration Service, to not issue citizenship documents to people born in the U.S. who cannot provide evidence of the legal status of one or more of their parents. This approach would be challenged in court as a violation of the 14th Amendment and Wong Kim Ark. Again, the pliant court system will favor Trump here and the period of uncertainty will cause fear and chaos, which may be the whole point.

Gumming Up the Works

The last administration learned some tricks to make the immigration process slower and less reliable. By cutting personnel, embracing restrictive interpretations, and adding documentary burdens on immigrants, the Trump administration was able to create a backlog of cases that took years to approve. The Biden administration never made any serious effort to address those delays and, as a result, the delays are as bad as they have ever been. With a Trump administration likely to deliberately slow walk applications, immigrants who have applied for benefits such as citizenship, residence, or employment authorization can expect lengthy delays.

Restrict Asylum

The first Trump administration issued decisions to limit asylum eligibility. Many of these decisions were reversed in the Biden administration. Project 2025, which was an effort by former Trump officials to identify changes to the government that Trump could make, but disingenuously disavowed by Trump on the campaign trail, recommends that Congress eliminate the “particular social group” ground of the asylum statute. This portion of the asylum statute was meant to provide protection for people based upon certain specific immutable characteristics that were not race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Under these grounds, LGBTQ people, victims of domestic violence, members of disfavored families, members of clans and tribes, and women and children who meet specific criteria have obtained protection in the U.S. Eliminating this basis for asylum would lock out some of the most vulnerable people in the world from asylum.

Preparing to Fight Back: Our Next Steps

These are the major themes we expect from Trump’s administration, but they will likely take many more steps to limit immigration. Our next post will focus on what we can and will be doing to fight back.