Introduction
In his campaign for the presidency in 2024, then-candidate Donald Trump focused particular attention on immigration policy.1 Differentiating his proposed approach from that of the Biden Administration,2 Trump promised that if he were elected, he would “close the border” to migrants entering without authorization.3 In the interior of the country, he pledged to oversee “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”4
One year in, the Trump Administration claims victory on both counts.5 In describing the southern border, the Trump Administration points to reports of a sharp decline in encounters between Border Patrol agents and unauthorized entrants.6 Removals from the interior also have increased substantially.7 The Administration claims that more than 675,000 individuals were “deport[ed]” and that another 2.2 million individuals departed the United States in the first year of President Trump’s term.8
This Essay analyzes the means that the Trump Administration has used to achieve its ends. Certain elements of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies differ in intensity or focus rather than in kind from the policies of past administrations. Past U.S. presidential administrations have relied on racial profiling in interior immigration enforcement,9 have used the threat of immigration detention to deter migrants from attempting to enter the country and to encourage their departure,10 and have detained immigrants (sometimes for extended periods of time) to avoid their release into the country during the pendency of their administrative proceedings.11 Every President from Ronald Reagan onward has relied upon Immigration and Nationality Act12 (INA) section 212(f)13 to bar certain foreign nationals otherwise qualified to enter the United States from doing so.14 Since the 1990s (and sporadically in the decades before), every presidential administration, regardless of party affiliation, has overseen the deportations of tens of thousands of individuals per year.15 Families have been separated, sometimes forever, under these policies.16
All of these things continue to be true under President Trump. But the continuities in immigration enforcement strategies are vastly outstripped by the differences.17 Even when the Administration is using familiar tools, such as racial profiling,18 immigration detention,19 and entry bans,20 it is doing so in ways that look and feel like substantial breaks with practices of presidential administrations in recent history.21
This Essay explores the novel immigration policy choices this Administration has made in order to effectuate its agenda and explains the broader implications of these choices for U.S. democracy. Part I explores four broad subcategories of change. Section I.A describes the significant expansion of immigration policing and arrests in the interior of the United States, unguided by meaningful enforcement priorities, and undergirded by a heavy reliance on racial profiling and violence. Section I.B discusses the Administration’s expansive use of coercive immigration detention, including as against longtime and lawful U.S. residents. Section I.C tackles the Administration’s exertion of substantial political control over immigration adjudication, combined with significant gamesmanship in federal judicial proceedings. Section I.D illuminates the Administration’s discriminatory reconfiguration (and outright elimination) of lawful immigration pathways.
Part II evaluates the broader context and meaning of these policy shifts. Section II.A explains how these changes in immigration policy are part of a larger break with the nation’s formal post–Civil Rights era rejection of racially discriminatory laws. Section II.B discusses how these changes are part of a broader reconfiguration of executive authority through the erosion of separation of powers principles. Section II.C demonstrates that recent developments in immigration policy are a part of the Trump Administration’s broader rejection of a rule-based system of international law. This Essay concludes with some reflections on how developments in immigration policy during the first year of the second Trump Administration constitute both a microcosm and a staging ground for broader antidemocratic shifts in the Trump Administration’s governance strategy.