President-elect Donald Trump put immigration at the front of his campaign agenda, pledging to bring what he calls “unprecedented order” to the southern border and launch the nation’s largest mass deportation operation of undocumented immigrants on his first day in office.
Throughout his campaign, Trump called immigration a crisis and vowed to move swiftly to implement a series of controversial policies to clamp down on illegal immigration and curb new arrivals.
“We are going to fix our borders. … We want people to come back in, but we have to let them come back in. They have to come in legally,” Trump said during his victory speech in Florida on Tuesday.
However, managing the re-entry of possibly millions of people presents formidable legal and logistical challenges.
“There’s this belief that there’s a line and people should stand in line. Oftentimes, there’s not a line,” Mark Hetfield, CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, told VOA.
A Migration Policy Institute report makes the same point, saying there are multiple visa pathways, each with distinct backlogs and wait times, governing how long individuals wait for permanent residency.
Annual limits and country quotas create extensive delays, with some applicants facing waits lasting decades.
Many undocumented immigrants may have no way to join these lines because of restrictive re-entry policies.
The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act blocks re-entry for immigrants with a history of “unlawful presence” in the U.S. If they leave and want to re-enter legally, those with more than 180 days but less than one year of unlawful presence face a three-year re-entry ban. Those with more than one year of unlawful presence face a 10-year ban.
Unlawful presence generally includes overstaying or entering without inspection.
Largest deportation campaign in US history
Trump has vowed to surpass deportation numbers from his first term.
With plans to use the National Guard to round up undocumented immigrants, Trump has also invoked the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that allows the president to deport noncitizens from nations deemed hostile to the United States.
Trump aims to drastically reduce the undocumented population, something his supporters see as a step toward restoring order, though opponents argue it will lead to legal battles and logistical hurdles.
Jeremy Robbins, executive director of the American Immigration Council, wrote in an email to VOA that should any president choose to pursue mass deportation, it would come at an extraordinary cost to the government while also devastating the economy.
“It’s critical that policymakers and the American public understand what this would involve: tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, already-strained industries devastated, millions of people locked up in detention, and thousands of families torn apart causing widespread terror and chaos in communities across the country,” Robbins wrote.
Travel ban, birthright citizenship and more
The Remain in Mexico program, a program initiated in the first Trump administration, is expected to be renewed. The policy forces migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed. Also expected to be renewed is a policy to quickly expel migrants and curb immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Another central promise Trump made during his presidential campaign is to roll back initiatives under the Biden administration that have allowed specific groups of migrants to enter the U.S. legally.
Under Biden, up to 30,000 migrants per month from four countries — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — were allowed to come to the U.S. legally if they met certain conditions. Trump has pledged to end these pathways.
In an effort to intensify scrutiny of those entering the U.S., Trump has promised to renew and expand travel bans aimed at a broader list of countries and introduce an “ideological screening” to bar individuals whom Trump describes as “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs.”
Trump’s campaign says this measure will enhance national security, though it has sparked concerns over discrimination and civil liberties.
Trump also said he plans to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally. This would require a reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment and is expected to face intense legal challenges.
While Trump’s immigration plans have the support of his base, they face steep opposition from advocacy groups and legal experts, who argue that mass deportations and travel bans could lead to human rights violations and extensive court challenges.
Hetfield of HIAS told VOA that advocates are concerned about what a new Trump administration will do to legal immigration.
“We will likely litigate if he tries to close down the [refugee] program and oversteps. … But the bottom line is, the president has a lot of discretion when it comes to the refugee program. … And for asylum, [he’s] going to make it impossible to apply at the border as he did with Title 42 and his Remain in Mexico policies,” Hetfield said.
Michelle Ming, political director at United We Dream, the nation's largest immigrant youth-led organization, said they will be ready to “protect” immigrant families.
Ming anticipates a significant amount of “know your rights” events throughout Trump’s second term in the White House.
“Once Trump takes office, we're going to remind him that we are here to fight back against any kind of policy that he tries to implement to hurt our communities,” Ming said.
