Trump's Planning A Flood Of Immigration Executive Orders On Day 1

President-elect Donald Trump is eager to use week one to show his supporters he is making good on his signature issue: immigration.

But he is unlikely to fulfill some of his biggest and most aggressive Day One promises — including a large-scale deportation effort and a rapid end to birthright citizenship — given the legal and logistical challenges and the need for Congress to back him up with new laws and funding.

Trump’s emphasis as he enters the Oval Office on Monday is sending a loud signal that the border is closed to illegal crossings and that anyone who is living in the U.S. unauthorized, especially those who have committed crimes, is not safe from deportation, according to seven people familiar with the planning, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations and their expectations about Trump’s first week. He’ll do so through a slew of executive orders and actions, launching the process of resurrecting policies from his first term, shredding Biden administration immigration policy and taking what Trump officials have labeled the “handcuffs” off of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a member of the Border Security Caucus, said in an interview that Trump will need Congress to enact some of his more wide-ranging promises and that Trump’s upcoming executive actions largely mirror those implemented during his first term and undone by the Biden administration.

“I haven’t seen something that is dramatically new,” he said.

That’s not to say they won’t have impact.

Supporters and critics alike expect the first week to set the tone for Trump’s return to hard-line immigration policies — the culmination of four years of policy planning among his allies to craft actions that they hope can withstand legal muster. The early days of the second Trump administration will serve as a crucial test of this preparedness and set into motion action on the Hill, as Trump’s top officials, including incoming border czar Tom Homan and Stephen Miller — the immigration hard-liner who will serve as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy — urge Republicans to back his agenda with legislation as soon as possible.

Republican lawmakers have been meeting with top Trump officials in recent days to strategize. Rank-and-file members see the results of the 2024 election and their majority as a mandate to try to turn Trump’s executive actions into law, to better withstand court challenges and rollback by a future president.

“A lot of times we are held hostage by the administration, who makes a big shift left and then a big shift right and a big shift left,” said Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) in an interview. “Congress’ job in the long term is to solve this problem, to make sure that security — our nation’s safety — is at the forefront.”

Trump’s team has been crafting a national emergency declaration, a move designed to unlock additional authorities and resources to follow through on the incoming president’s promise to secure the border and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, according to four of the people. The president-elect’s initial swath of executive orders will also signal the end of catch and release — the release of migrants into a U.S. community while they await their immigration court hearings — and expand a fast-tracked deportation authority known as “expedited removal.”

He is also expected to forge ahead with directing agencies to begin the process of restoring Remain in Mexico, a first-term policy that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their cases to be processed. And his team is still deliberating a designation of drug cartels as terrorist organizations, resurfacing a policy that never came to fruition in his first term, two of the people said.

The Trump administration is not expected to attempt to reinstate a public health authority known as Title 42 in its early weeks, as it would take time for officials to determine whether there’s another health issue they could use to justify the measure. Title 42 allowed border agents to immediately expel migrants on public health grounds. But transition officials are planning measures that will go beyond President Joe Biden’s June border crackdown, further restricting asylum outside of official ports of entry, according to five of the people. The Justice Department is also expected to have a hand in the incoming efforts to clamp down on asylum, as Trump transition officials work to avoid the same legal pitfalls from the first administration.

The officials have also been crafting an executive order to end birthright citizenship by excluding the children of undocumented immigrants and short-term visitors to the U.S. from the right to citizenship by birth that is established under the 14th Amendment. It remains unclear how sweeping the action would be. And while it could still come next week, the people familiar with the planning note that the administration may hold off, given the anticipated court challenges and varying legal opinions on the matter among Republicans.

The Trump transition did not respond to a request for comment.

Immigration advocates and civil rights groups, as well as blue state attorneys general, are in wait-and-see mode ahead of next week, readying to analyze Trump’s executive orders and issue legal challenges. Already, they’ve prepared to respond to efforts to end birthright citizenship, any misuse of military troops on domestic soil, attempts to force local or state law enforcement to do the job of the federal government or any actions that deny people’s right to the constitutional right to due process. Trump transition officials expect many of the president-elect’s early executive actions to face immediate legal challenges and are preparing to respond.

“We should expect that they’re going to do everything they can to follow through on their threats,” said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, a pro-immigration group. “And so the immigrant rights, immigration advocates are preparing for and anticipating that they will try to carry out every single threat. The question for us is, what is constitutional and what is unconstitutional?”

But immigration advocates also recognize the steep climb Trump faces as he looks to implement his sweeping agenda, particularly when it comes to mass deportations.

“Given that tent facilities for deportations can cost over $400 a night, they are quickly going to burn through billions of dollars in deportations,” said Kerri Talbot, co-executive director at the Immigration Hub, an immigration advocacy group. “Even just the bill that the Senate is considering this week would cost ICE tens of billions of dollars.”

The president-elect will move quickly to undo a slate of Biden administration policies, including rolling back a directive from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that established the enforcement priorities for which immigrants to deport — with an emphasis on people who threaten national security and public safety. It directed ICE officers to learn the “totality of the facts and circumstances” about criminal convictions before deciding whether to deport someone, rather than relying solely on convictions as a basis for deportation. They’ll also likely move to deactivate the CBP One app program, set up to allow migrants to schedule an appointment to seek asylum via a mobile phone application, several people said.

Trump will end the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program for some residents of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. It was introduced by the Biden administration to discourage migrants from trying to cross the border illegally, offering a way for more than 500,000 immigrants from these countries to enter the U.S. legally as long as they had been vetted and had an American-based sponsor. Trump is expected to end a similar program for Afghans, as well as a family reunification parole process for migrants from another slate of countries.

As the Trump administration looks to launch perhaps the president-elect’s most notable campaign promises — mass deportations — it will use the first week to dust off agreements reached under the 287(g) program that allows state and local agencies to act as immigration enforcement agents, four of the people said. They also plan to send a warning message to sanctuary cities, likely with an executive order that outlines their priorities for combating cities and states that refuse to help the federal government with immigration enforcement.

But even as the administration looks to aggressively roll out its initial slate of executive actions, there will be no shortage of challenges facing the White House. Even allies expect his mass deportation operation to be gradual, much different from the Day One, rapid transition he promised on the trail.

“You’re not going to see historic numbers in month one. You start to see a steady increase, and then it’ll keep building and building,” said a person familiar with the incoming administration’s planning.

From legal to resource challenges, the pressure will shift to Congress — and fast. The Trump administration will need more resources to find, detain and remove the millions of undocumented immigrants they’ve promised, and detention capacity alone will be costly. Lawmakers will have to send money, and the administration would need to hire and train more officers.

“Look, the president is going to take his actions. The other side is going to sue him,” Issa said. “He’s going to be in litigation on some of what he does, and we’re going to be trying to legislate.”

And the pressures from inside the Republican Party will only intensify in the weeks ahead. Trump’s aides have also discussed another travel ban — reminiscent of the ban on entry from citizens of certain Muslim-majority countries from his first term — though the process of vetting and determining which countries to include in the list of restricted nations could take time.

Meanwhile, hard-line immigration advocates and MAGA loyalists, including former Trump chief adviser Steve Bannon, are pushing for a temporary moratorium on all immigration, including temporary and travel visas, a discussion complicated by the fight over H-1B visas for specialty foreign workers that divided the party.

Miller and Homan have “a great grasp on both the deportations, the wall security, so that I think is covered by very smart guys who know this,” said Bannon in an interview with POLITICO this week. “The one I want that’s not gonna be the first day, but eventually get there — I want a complete, 100 percent moratorium on all immigration.”

Betsy Woodruff Swan contributed to this report.