In the first 100 days of his new term, President-elect Donald Trump has set his sights on an ambitious immigration agenda that could see hundreds of thousands of people deported. Trump’s team is already strategizing how to craft executive actions that could withstand legal challenges from immigrant rights groups. This is in an effort to avoid the early defeat his 2017 travel ban faced. This time, however, Trump may have more favorable arbiters in the form of a federal judiciary he transformed during his first term, including over 200 federal judges he appointed himself and three conservative justices in the Supreme Court.
Despite this, Trump’s immigration agenda faces considerable challenges, particularly in the logistical aspects of mass deportation. The speed at which Trump could alter deportation policy hinges on overcoming tactical challenges like expanding detention capacity and navigating a colossal immigration court backlog. To lead the charge, Trump has appointed South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who has little experience with the Department of Homeland Security.
Ramping up deportations
Trump has always been vocal about his intentions of mass deportation, which could affect a significant portion of an estimated 11 million people in the U.S. without legal authorization. However, this could run into logistical problems. The largest number of yearly removals came in FY 2013 during the Obama administration, with more than 430,000 people removed from the U.S. Trump’s advisers have indicated they would prioritize people with criminal convictions and final removal orders for deportation. According to the pro-immigration American Immigration Council, about 1.19 million people had these orders in 2022. Just removing the people in that category could take years.
Ending parole for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela
Another Biden administration program expected to end rapidly is a special visa-free humanitarian parole process for some residents of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. As of August, nearly 530,000 individuals from these countries had traveled to the U.S. via the program and were granted permission to live and work in the U.S. for two years. Trump, however, campaigned on expelling many of them. He promised to revoke Haitians’ eligibility for Temporary Protected Status, a program that shields some people from countries with unsafe conditions from deportation and grants them work permits.
Rolling back the Mayorkas memo
Early in the Biden administration, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo outlining priorities for which immigrants to deport. It emphasized people who threaten national security and public safety. Immigration restrictionists expect this guidance to be one of the first to be scrapped.
In conclusion, Trump’s immigration agenda is ambitious and complex, packed with numerous initiatives and potential pitfalls. The logistical challenges of mass deportation, the end of parole for certain people, and the rollback of the Mayorkas memo are just some of the hurdles his administration will face. However, with a reformed federal judiciary and a Supreme Court stacked with his appointees, Trump is poised to push through these changes. While the outcome of his immigration policies remains to be seen, one thing is clear: the next 100 days will be a critical period for immigration policy in the U.S.
