Team Trump’s Immigration Protocols

Dianne Feeley

• Use the $46.5 billion budgeted for building and reinforcing the wall on the southern border along with installing surveillance.

• Hire 10,000 more ICE agents and 8,500 Custom & Border Protection agents. Reassign government personnel to help ICE locate, detain and deport immigrants.

• Use of Alien Enemies Act to avoid need for due process.

• Cancel Temporary Protective Status.

•? equire registration of all immigrants 14 and older in the country for more than 30 days.

• Merge and centralize government data in order to better track immigrants.

• Arrest and deport immigrants and those with student visas who express opinions different from what the administrative state defines as in the national interests of the country.

• Attempt to deport immigrants who have committed infractions in the past, even when they served their time and had their records expunged.

• Build more detention facilities with the $45 billion from the new budget. Currently ICE has 100 detention facilities, with 41,500 beds. Many are operated by for-profit companies.

• End the enforcement of the Flores Settlement Agreement that maximizes the safety conditions under which migrant children can be held. This agreement only applies at the border, so it is open season for separating children when families are arrested elsewhere. It is already used when parents are able to prevent being deported to a country they regard as unsafe. Their children are taken from them in order to put pressure on them to leave.

• Use tariffs/agreements to force countries in the Global South to accept noncitizens.

• Disregard rules and procedures such as needing a judicial warrant to arrest immigrants or requiring agents to identify themselves.

• End the practice of sanctuary spaces for immigrants.

• End obligations under the UN Declaration of Human Rights and other protocols the US has signed to accept refugees or asylum seekers. Refugees who have been vetted to come to the United States are out of luck.

• End birthright citizenship.

• Develop a method for deporting naturalized citizens by claiming that national security requires it.

• Curtail public benefits for the 8.25 million children living in mixed-status families.

• Significantly increase fees and penalties for any humanitarian protections.

September-October 2025, ATC 238