The Origins,Consequences,and Uncertain Legacy of the Trump Administration’s Humanitarian,Refugee,and Immigration Policies: A Comprehensive Analysis

The Extensive Power of the Political Branches of Government over Immigration

The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized the plenary power of the political branches of government to regulate migration at U.S. borders ⁹ and to establish and enforce deportation standards. ¹⁰ Although not enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, this authority derives from the need for a unified approach to foreign affairs and to the nation’s sovereignty (Martin 2015, 39–41). As it stands, the plenary power doctrine “forecloses most direct constitutional challenges against congressional immigration statutes,” but not all “statute-based challenges to executive action,” “procedural due process challenges,” or legal challenges under the Administrative Procedure Act ¹¹ (ibid., 31). On the other hand, federal jurisprudence on migration offers legal cover to Congress and the Executive for pretextual laws and policies that are motivated by discrimination, domestic political considerations, or a misunderstanding of the sources of the nation’s strength and influence.

Restrictive Immigration Enforcement Laws of the Last Thirty years Coupled with Manifest Failures of Congress

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) may be the most consequential immigration legislation of the last three decades, ¹² paving the way for the “reforms” of both the first and second Trump administrations (Kerwin 2018a). IIRIRA conflated lack of immigration status with criminality and “alien-hood,” expanding the immigration offenses that constitute “crimes” (Abrego et al. 2017, 697–99). Among other provisions, IIRIRA:

Two other restrictive laws preceded IIRIRA in 1996. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 ¹³ severely limited public benefit eligibility for non-citizens, including LPRs. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ¹⁴ expanded mandatory detention (without an individualized custody determination) and the criminal grounds for deportation. After the September 11th attacks, Congress further expanded the standards and grounds of inadmissibility for terrorist activity, ¹⁵

Over the last four decades, Congress has repeatedly failed to enact a legal immigration overhaul. Twice during this period, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill which the House never voted on. In 2006, the Senate’s bipartisan Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act passed 62–36, ¹⁶ but the Republican-led House refused to take it up. Likewise, in 2013 the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” bill cleared by a 68–32 vote. ¹⁷ Yet after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary to a more conservative candidate, House Speaker John Boehner refused to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote. ¹⁸ In the ensuing years, House Republicans have pursued only piecemeal border and enforcement measures, avoiding any large immigration package.

The political dynamics explain much of this deadlock. Republican leaders have openly branded the Senate proposals (with their paths to citizenship) as “amnesty” for lawbreakers and insisted immigration could only be achieved in smaller chunks without any broad legalization plan. The political risk of championing a broader approach was evident in 2014, when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who was long seen as a future Speaker, was defeated in a GOP primary after a challenger hammered his support for a citizenship path. Since that date, if not before, most House and Senate Republicans have feared that any immigration legislation that provides even a modest benefit to immigrants would be tagged as amnesty, and they would be punished by primary voters. This dynamic has explained much of the current congressional stalemate, which has been solidified and validated after Trump’s winning a second term based on his immigration platform.

The Immense Growth of the U.S. Immigration Enforcement System

IIRIRA laid the groundwork for the extraordinary growth in the U.S. immigration enforcement system by authorizing significant funding for border and interior enforcement and by contributing to an enforcement infrastructure—consisting of staffing, technology, legal authorities—that demanded this funding. Much of the increased funding has supported the work of private, for-profit contractors, many with close ties to U.S. immigration enforcement agencies and the Trump administration (Eisen 2025; Ernsthausen et al. 2025; Hollingsworth and Hanna 2025; Watford 2025). It also has supported state (Rozen 2025) and local county jails (Pitman 2025).

The immense growth of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been widely reported in public policy and academic literature, but has received less critical attention from lawmakers. Few policymakers have questioned, for example, why the U.S. immigration enforcement system—particularly at a time of low illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border—cannot meet its basic responsibilities of regulating migration at U.S. land borders and ports-of-entry and enforcing the law in the nation’s interior without the massive increases in funding provided by H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. ¹⁹ H.R. 1 has the potential to fund ICE – at the height of public concern over the administration’s and the agency’s seeming indifference to the U.S. Constitution – at levels that exceed every other federal law enforcement agency and represent nearly a fourteen-fold increase—from $6.2 billion to $85 billion—in just a decade (Chappell 2026; DHS 2018, 36). Yet, Vice-President J.D. Vance and other administration officials have long claimed that the Border Patrol mostly needed to be “empowered to do their job” (PBS News 2024).

At this writing, the House and Senate are moving forward on a second ($72 billion) budget reconciliation bill that would fund CBP and ICE through FY 2029, bypassing the normal budget and appropriations process (Bolton 2026). This funding would supplement the unobligated funding to ICE and CBP from H.R. 1. It is a mark of the administration’s cruelty that ICE requires detained families to purchase bottled water or, if they cannot afford it, to rely on unclean, moldy communal water in at least one detention center (HRW and RAICES 2026, 20–1). The agency can obviously afford to provide clean water to all detainees, but chooses not to do so.

It is difficult to understand why CBP and ICE cannot meet their responsibilities without massive additional infusions of money. The 1.4 million non-citizens ordered removed who had not been removed by the end of 2024 (USICE 2024, 26–7), for example, represent an enforcement failure that strains every aspect of the U.S. immigration system, particularly its immigration courts (Kerwin and Millet 2023, 213–14). This failure is particulaly egregious because the U.S. has long had robust programs in place to remove non-citizens convicted of a range of crimes prior to their release from prison (US Department of Justice [DOJ] 2018). In addition, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) mandates that persons ordered removed be detained and removed within ninety days. ²⁰ Furthermore, the removal of violent criminals and security risks has been a priority of every administration for decades.

One reason the second Trump administration overwhelmingly arrests and detains persons without criminal convictions or with convictions for only minor offenses is that there are not enough of the “worst” offenders to meet its politically driven deportation goals. States and localities, of course, fully support the arrest, prosecution, and removal of cartel members, human traffickers, terrorists, violent felons, and others who victimize their communities (Hernandez et al. 2025).

To provide context on the growth in immigration enforcement funding, in 1997, the year after IIRIRA’s passage, the actual (enacted) enforcement budget of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was $1.935 billion (Krouse 1998, 3). This amount equaled (accounting for inflation) nearly $3.8 billion in 2024 dollars. By 2002, the year after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the INS enforcement budget reached $2.737 billion (DOJ 2004), or the equivalent of roughly $4.76 billion in 2024. By FY 2024, the enacted budgets of CBP and ICE approached $32.8 billion (DHS 2025, 14, 17). Moreover, this figure significantly undercounts enforcement spending. It fails to include the immense immigration enforcement-related work of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), including its issuance of notices to appear (NTAs), which commence removal proceedings (Carlson and Wheeler 2024, 341). Nor does it fully account for the immigration enforcement activities of non-DHS federal law enforcement, intelligence, and defense agencies, or states and localities.

By contrast, funding for the immigration courts—which adjudicate removal cases—has been consistently around 3 percent of CBP and ICE funding (Kerwin and Millet 2023, 197). This disparity has contributed to court backlogs of nearly 3.3. million pending cases at the end of March 2026 (TRACImmigration 2026b). The backlog, in turn, undermines the integrity of the U.S. immigration system as a whole (Kerwin and Millet 2023, 195–7). It punishes persons “with strong claims to remain, delaying their ability to gain relief from removal and to integrate” and “prevents the timely adjudication of cases with weaker claims” (ibid., 195). This problem underlies much of the frustration with the U.S. asylum system.

The administration’s solution to the backlog has not been to resource the court system, make common sense reforms, and preserve due process. It has been to dismiss what it characterizes as “legally deficient asylum applications” and other cases “without a hearing,” taking them out of the courts entirely and summarily deporting persons who have waited years to have their cases adjudicated (Executive Office for Immigration Review 2025; Gumble 2025).

President Trump signed into law H.R. 1 on July 4, 2025, a date intended to cloak the legislation in patriotism. The Act includes $170.7 billion in additional enforcement funding (beyond the normal appropriation process) through September 30, 2029, It will support staffing (including more than $2 billion for retention, hiring and performance bonuses), technology, infrastructure, equipment, and other expenses. To provide a sense of the size of this increase, $170.7 billion exceeds “the annual expenditures on police by state and local governments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia combined.” (O’Herron 2025).

H.R. 1 includes $45 billion for expansion of immigrant detention capacity, including “family residential centers” that will confine “alien children who are not unaccompanied” over four years. ²¹ For FY 2026 alone, the $11.25 billion budgeted for immigrant detention “exceeds the Department of Justice budget request for Fiscal Year 2026 for the entire federal prison system, which holds 155,000 people” (AIC 2025). This disparity raises the question of whether greater investment in other federal law enforcement agencies and in state and local police would make U.S. communities safer than will exponentially growing the U.S. immigration enforcement infrastructure. H.R. 1 provides for only 800 immigration judges, far fewer than are needed to reduce the backlog and accommodate normal caseloads (Kerwin and Kerwin 2024, 76–80). The bill will, thus, exacerbate disparities between immigration enforcement and adjudication of removal proceedings.

The Executive and Administrative Actions of the First Trump Administration

During his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump consistently criticized President Barack Obama for exercising executive authority to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA offered a provisional legal status, protection from deportation, work authorization, and select public benefits to undocumented persons who arrived in the United States as children. Candidate Trump promised to “immediately terminate” what he mischaracterized as “President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties, in which he defied federal law and the constitution” (Politico Staff 2016).

Once elected, President Trump professed to support a path to LPR status for DACA recipients for whom he had “great love” and “great heart” (Kumar 2020). However, he insisted that Congress needed to pass legislation to achieve this goal. Since then, he has never brokered a deal with Congress to bring this goal to fruition and DHS in the second Trump administration has arrested hundreds of DACA recipients and reported in February 2026 that it had deported more than 80 (Bazail-Eimil 2026).

The first Trump administration also nearly succeeded in terminating the U.S. asylum system, transforming a country that had since its inception offered safety to desperate persons fleeing persecution, war, tyranny, into a global leader in denying access to protection. The administration also failed to entertain the possibility of a legalization program for U.S. undocumented residents, a population that includes high rates of long-term residents, “essential” workers, and parents living with 5.2 million of their U.S. citizen children (Kerwin and Warren 2019b). Instead, it supported major cuts in legal immigration, imposed broad travel bans, and constructed large portions of a 2,000-mile border wall.

Notwithstanding its criticism of Obama’s executive overreach, the first Trump administration advanced its enforcement and restrictionist immigration policies through an array of 472 “executive actions” (Bolter, Israel, and Pierce 2022) and 1,064 immigration-related “policy actions,” including fifty-seven presidential orders (Guttentag 2025). These actions issued from DHS and its constituent agencies, as well as the Departments of State, Health and Human Services, Labor, and other federal agencies. These administrative directives covered issues as diverse as travel bans, the border wall, border enforcement, interior enforcement, workplace enforcement, visa requirements, adjustment of status to permanent residence, refugee resettlement, the expulsion of asylum-seekers, asylum standards, TPS, humanitarian parole, and public benefit eligibility. By the end of the first Trump administration, 120 policy changes were still being litigated (Yale Law School 2021).

The Second Trump Administration’s Use of Executive Authority to “Make” Immigration and Refugee Policy

In a comprehensive and prescient 2024 pre-election review of the immigration plans of candidate Trump and his allies in the America First Policy Institute and Heritage Foundation, Carlson and Wheeler (2024, 347) cautioned: “In nearly every conceivable way, a second Trump administration promises to be more extreme from the first.” The authors described what was likely to come under the second Trump administration, based on prior practices in the first administration and public reporting. In particular, it was evident a second Trump administration would close the border, increase interior enforcement, invoke the Alien Enemies Act, deploy the military to help enforce immigration laws, end humanitarian protections, and politicize immigration courts.

On the administration’s first day in office in 2025, the President issued a series of wide-ranging EOs that made the case for its cuts to humanitarian aid and outlined its immigration, asylum, refugee, and enforcement agenda. The EOs respond to legitimate concerns related to border security and screening. However, they combine inaccurate claims about refugees and immigrants, with familiar nativist conventions. This sub-section will review the rationale for the administration’s policies, as set forth in select EOs.

The EO “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” falsely characterizes illegal entries as a military invasion and a national security, safety, and public health risk (White House 2025a). It asserts: “Many of these aliens unlawfully within the United States present significant threats to national security and public safety, committing vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans. Others are engaged in hostile activities, including espionage, economic espionage, and preparations for terror-related activities. Many have abused the generosity of the American people, and their presence in the United States has cost taxpayers billions of dollars at the Federal, State, and local levels” (ibid.). A Cato Institute study subsequently concluded that there was neither an “invasion” or a correlation between “immigrant population share and disease incidence” (Nowrasteh and Chanwong 2025). The EO further vows “to faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens” and “to achieve the total and efficient enforcement of those laws” (White House 2025a).

The EO on “Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States” seeks to identify the role of the U.S. Armed Forces in border control or what it terms “repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities” (White House 2025b). This formulation associates persons seeking safety, a job, and a better life, with heinous criminals.

The EO titled “Securing Our Borders” lays the groundwork for the administration’s mass deportation program (White House 2025c). It refers to “a large-scale invasion at an unprecedented level” of “illegal aliens,” which it indicates may include “terrorists, foreign spies, members of cartels, gangs, and violent transnational criminal organizations, and other hostile actors with malicious intent” (ibid.)

The Trump administration has treated the U.S. asylum system as an immigration enforcement loophole. It has flaunted U.S. and international law, both of which recognize the right to seek asylum and prohibit the return of refugees and asylees to countries where their life or freedom would be threatened on an enumerated ground.

The administration has also characterized the presence of large numbers of asylum-seekers as irrefutable proof of the Biden administration’s lawless, open-border strategy. This claim ignores the many reasons for the high numbers of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. and elsewhere. Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and others fled horrific conditions in their home countries, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Moreover, under the Biden administration DHS conducted more “repatriations”—removals, expulsions, and other actions—than during the first Trump administration, and more than any administration since the second term of George W. Bush (Chishti and Bush-Joseph 2024). The Biden administration also maintained until May 2023 the first Trump administration’s Title 42 public health restrictions, which blocked access to the U.S. asylum system and ultimately led to 2.8 million expulsions. Finally, the Biden administration reduced access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border to scheduled appointments through the CBP One App.

The EO “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States” directs the Armed Forces to assist DHS to secure “full operational control” of the U.S.-Mexico border (White House 2025d). The Secure Fence Act of 2006 defined “operational control,” as “the prevention of all unlawful U.S. entries,” ²² a symbolic goal and one the second Trump administration has not attained.

The administration has succeeded however, in extending the “border” (control tactics) into the interior of the country in pursuit of its mass deportation goals. Under the law, the Border Patrol can operate “within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States” and can “board and search for non-citizens in any vessel within the territorial waters of the United States and any railcar, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle.” ²³ (U.S. Customs and Border Protection 2026). By regulation, a reasonable distance extends from 100 air miles from the border, ²⁴ covering an estimated two-thirds of all U.S. residents. This means, for example, that the Border Patrol can conduct warrantless stops and searches in communities long thought to possess full constitutional rights and popularly believed to be located beyond the “border” (ACLU 2025).

The EO entitled “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program” indefinitely suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and lay the groundwork for a skeletal program that primarily resettles white Afrikaners. The EO claims that the United States lacks “the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants” in ways that would protect the “safety and security” of Americans and ensure the “appropriate assimilation of refugees” (White House 2025h).

In fact, refugees contribute immensely to U.S. communities. A 2024 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, found that the “net fiscal impact of refugees and asylees was positive over the 15-year period” from 2005-2019 “at $123.8 billion” (Ghertner et al. 2014). It also found that refugees and asylees with ten or more years of residency “had approximately the same level of income as the total U.S. population” (ibid., 22). A 2018 study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) found that over time, refugees come to exceed the total U.S. population in median personal income, homeownership, percentage above the poverty line, access to a computer and the internet, and health insurance (Kerwin 2018b, 216).

The EO also averred that U.S. communities could not resettle (exhaustively vetted) refugees without endangering or compromising “the availability of resources” for “Americans.” Yet 80 percent of U.S. states that affirmatively consented to resettling refugees during the first Trump administration (Voice of America 2020), and governors from both parties praised USRAP and its contributions to their states (Alvarez and Mena 2020).

The EO on “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” calls “the privilege” of U.S. citizenship a “priceless and profound gift” (White House 2025f). It then undermines the source of that gift, the U.S. Constitution, by misinterpreting the Fourteenth Amendment’s plain language (which guarantees citizenship to persons born in the United States), its legislative history, a precedential Supreme Court decision, ²⁵ several cases “building on this landmark precedent, and subsequent affirming legislation ²⁶ (Ho 2006; Stock 2012). The administration claims it can revoke birthright citizenship by executive fiat (not a Constitutional amendment) ²⁷ for persons whose: (1) mothers are unlawfully present if the father is not a U.S. citizen or an LPR; or (2) mothers are lawfully present for a temporary period if the father is not a U.S. citizen or LPR. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the administration’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship by fiat in June or early July of 2026.

The EO titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid” declared that: “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many ways are antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal and among countries” (White House 2025g). A press statement on implementing this order pledged that the “United States is no longer going to blindly dole out money with no return for the American people” (DOS 2025). It would be hard to make a convincing case that humanitarian assistance destabilizes the world, and the administration makes this assertion without evidence.

In announcing a ninety-day pause on “new obligations and disbursements” on humanitarian and development assistance, the EO defied Congress, a co-equal branch of government, which had authorized and allocated funding for these accounts and programs in FY 2025 pursuant to its authority to tax and spend public monies, known as the “power of the purse.” ²⁸

The EO did not explain—nor could it in any credible way—how saving lives at relatively low cost could be “antithetical to U.S. values” or even consistent with an “America First” ideology. John Danforth (2025), former U.S. senator and U.N. ambassador to the United Nations, has argued that an ideology that allows people to starve and that cares “only about itself” betrays the nation’s identity and makes it unrecognizable. U.S. suppliers of food, medicine, and other products—among many others—viewed these imperfect programs as consistent with U.S. values. The programs also enjoyed bi-partisan support by Members of Congress. Most Members did not think, for example, that funding medical care and education subverted the nation’s identity or destabilized the world. They could take pride in education programs for refugee children and youth, which not only improved the prospects of young people, but offered them protection from child labor, forced marriage, recruitment by armed groups, crime, and predations of different kinds (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] 2025a).

Border Enforcement

As a candidate, Trump promised to close the border and, in many ways as president he has succeeded in keeping that promise. The number of border encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border fell dramatically in the waning months of the Biden administration, fell further in February 2025, the first full month of the Trump administration, and averaged less than 10,700 per month from February 2025 through January 2026. ²⁹ Border security is the only issue where most Americans approve of his job performance (Bowman and Kamisar 2026).

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, his administration suspended the CBP One app, used during the Biden administration to allow individuals to enter the United States via a grant of parole. That same day, Trump issued Proclamation No. 10888, ³⁰ which prevents anyone who crosses the southern border of the United States other than at a port of entry from applying for asylum or withholding of removal. It also prevents even those who did present themselves at a port of entry but without a visa or required medical information, criminal history records, and other background records, from applying for asylum or withholding of removal. The Proclamation relies on the President’s statutory authority to suspend or restrict entry into the United States under INA §212(f). Implementing guidance issued to the various immigration agencies allows them to quickly remove individuals apprehended at or near a port of entry, either pursuant to expedited removal or direct repatriation. ³¹ Those who express a fear of return are to be screened only for protection under the Convention Against Torture and not for eligibility for asylum or withholding of removal. ³²

Litigation challenging the closing of the border soon followed these actions. In February 2025, a complaint was filed in the District of Columbia in a case called Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, et al. v. Noem, challenging the closure of the border and the administration’s actions to prevent individuals from seeking asylum under the statute. ³³ In July 2025, the district court issued an order enjoining the Presidential Proclamation at issue, finding that it violated the statutory rights of noncitizens to seek asylum. ³⁴ On April 24, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the INA does not authorize the Executive Branch to establish new summary removal procedures or to deny noncitizens access to statutory protections, including asylum. ³⁵ The government may still seek further review through panel rehearing or rehearing en banc, and may pursue any appeal to the Supreme Court within the applicable time limits.

In a second lawsuit filed on June 11, 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, titled Al Otro Lado v. Trump, plaintiffs challenged the cancellation of the CBP One application that left tens of thousands of individuals who had been waiting for their appointments stranded in Mexico. ³⁶ The matter is currently awaiting a decision by the district court.

Regardless of whether plaintiffs have success in these lawsuits, there are currently few apprehensions along the border. In fact, many people are making the dangerous return journey south rather than attempting to enter the United States (Delacroix and Janetsky 2025). The administration’s cruel policies have instilled fear in immigrants and in U.S. families, even those without foreign-born residents (Bernstein et al. 2026). The Trump administration has created an image of the United States as a place that is not worth the journey. In that sense, the administration would likely consider its border policies to be a success. Many other observers, however, question whether destroying the image of the United States as a beacon of freedom and opportunity, and removing persons who sustain the U.S. economy, businesses, and families is a worthwhile goal.

Interior Enforcement

As promised, the Trump administration took immediate and aggressive steps to escalate interior immigration enforcement, often at the expense of legal and procedural protections. These efforts were initially focused on immigrants with criminal records and those with outstanding orders of removal. But to meet a politically driven target of one million removals per year and at least 3,000 arrests per day (Hallas 2025), they soon expanded to cover people who overstayed temporary visas, asylum applicants, and persons granted parole or other forms of lawful temporary status.

Low numbers of border crossers, coupled with an indiscriminate mass deportation program, led to an historical inversion of the location of DHS apprehensions—from the U.S. border, to the interior of the United States. This trend has invariably netted well-established U.S. residents and has caused immense damage to the economy, U.S. citizen children, families, and communities (AIC 2026b, 12–7; Bazail-Eimil 2026; Blair and Hausman 2026; Ernsthausen et al. 2026; Griffith 2026; KIND 2026, 5–7; Levine et al. 2026). Moreover, it is detaining and deporting far more parents, even though roughly one-half of detained fathers and three-quarters of detained mothers have “no criminal convictions in the United States except for traffic- or immigration-related offenses” (Ernsthausen et al. 2026). Finally, dramatically increased detention space, coupled with more “street arrests,” and fewer releases has led to significant increases in “interior deportations” during the second Trump administration (Blair and Hausman 2026). The following summarizes the major enforcement initiatives undertaken by the administration.

Immigration Court

The extreme politicization of the immigration courts under the Trump administration has progressed swiftly, making it even more difficult for asylum-seekers, person stripped of legal status, and even resettled refugees to have their claims fairly decided on the merits. The same day that Trump was inaugurated, four senior officials at the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the DOJ agency that oversees that immigration courts, were fired. ⁵⁹ That early action set the stage for the purging of EOIR’s ranks that continues to this day. In the first ten months of 2025, 125 judges were fired (without explanation) or voluntarily resigned (Bustillo and Mather 2025), including judges in supervisory roles (Tareen 2025b) and all appellate judges appointed under President Biden.

Observers have long warned about the risk of politicization of the agency, given that immigration courts are housed in the DOJ and are not independent of the executive branch (American Bar Association, Commission on Immigration [ABA] 2010; Kerwin and Millet 2023). But few predicted the scale of the lawlessness that has ensued as the administration illegally and brazenly fired IJs in violation of civil service protections. Firings are not typically announced by the agency, so it is left to local advocates and observers to piece together which IJs have been removed.

Parallel to firing these individuals, EOIR has moved to relax the hiring standards for onboarding new IJs—a move likely to bring any new hires in line with the ideological goals of the administration. Examples of troubling new hiring standards include a Federal Register Notice ⁶⁰ allowing the agency to designate temporary IJs who do not necessarily have any immigration law experience, as well as a reported plan to designate up to 600 military judges ⁶¹ to serve as temporary IJs. While IJs who lack training in immigration law are more likely to make mistakes and misapply the law, EOIR may be counting on the fact that only a small percentage of noncitizens will have the ability to appeal to the court of appeals in their jurisdiction. In that regard, the agency may get away with its bad behavior and poorly reasoned decisions in many cases.

EOIR has also issued a steady stream of internal policy memoranda (memos) to more tightly control the functioning of the immigration courts. The policy memos cover a range of topics regarding EOIR’s policies and procedures, including issues such as case management, eligibility for relief from removal, procedural practices, and the handling of specific claims. While the range of topics covered is large, what the memos generally have in common is that EOIR leadership uses them as a public forum to air a wide array of grievances. These include diatribes against noncitizens, ⁶² their advocates, ⁶³ the prior administration, ⁶⁴ and current EOIR employees. ⁶⁵ While the memos might be dismissed on the merits, the politicization of the immigration courts seriously impacts millions of noncitizens’ immigration cases. The policy memos create the impression of EOIR as an agency working in lockstep with the administration’s goals of deporting as many people, with as little due process as possible.

The BIA has also issued a record number of precedential decisions during the second Trump administration—well over seventy as of this writing. There have been several Attorney General (AG) decisions, including those limiting asylum eligibility based on domestic violence and membership in a particular social group based on the applicant’s nuclear family. ⁶⁶ The AG also intervened in the long-running Negusie case dealing with the persecutor bar to asylum. ⁶⁷ The AG’s intervention in these matters was needed to overturn prior AG decisions issued under Merrick Garland, as the BIA cannot overturn AG precedent. It is notable, however, that in several other cases, the AG has reissued a previously nonprecedential decision as a BIA precedential decision.

In addition, having purged its ranks of dissenting opinions, the BIA is free to adopt whatever policy preference the Trump administration wants to push at a given time. Notably, all except two of the dozens of precedential decisions issued this year resulted in a negative outcome for the noncitizen. In addition to the AG decisions mentioned above, the BIA has issued several decisions tightening asylum standards, including by making it more difficult for victims of gender-based violence to gain asylum. ⁶⁸ It has also issued decisions undercutting claims for protection from persecution and torture in Salvadoran prisons at exactly the same time that the administration was pushing to deport noncitizens to the notorious Salvadoran torture dungeon CECOT. ⁶⁹

Perhaps the most harmful of the BIA decisions issued thus far is Matter of Yajure-Hurtado. ⁷⁰ In that decision, the BIA held that, under INA § 235(b)(2)(A), IJs lack authority to hear bond requests or grant bond to noncitizens who are present in the United States without inspection and admission. This means that, under the BIA’s interpretation, any noncitizen who entered the United States without inspection at any time, no matter how long ago, is subject to mandatory detention under INA § 235(b)(2)(A). While many practitioners have had success in challenging the reasoning in this decision through habeas petitions and district courts have nearly universally rejected the reasoning of Yajure-Hurtado, ⁷¹ the reality is that many detained noncitizens do not have the resources to bring an individual habeas petition from a detention center. As a result, the administration can keep tens of thousands of individuals detained in deplorable conditions, with no practical way to challenge their detention. This policy—as intended—is leading many to abandon their claims for relief out of desperation. The policy has also created a circuit split, with three circuit courts finding the no-bond challenge to be unlawful ⁷² , while two other courts of appeals have agreed with the BIA’s interpretation. ⁷³ It is likely that the matter will be resolved by the Supreme Court in the next term.

EOIR has also worked to aid ICE in removing people from the immigration court process. One such example was an email issued on May 30, 2025, purporting to lay out the standards for IJs considering motions to dismiss proceedings against noncitizens, to remove them from the immigration court process, and instead to place them into expedited removal. The implication of the email for many IJs was that they should grant ICE motions to dismiss without giving noncitizens the opportunity to properly respond. A lawsuit followed that challenges the federal government’s policy of “targeting noncitizens at their immigration court proceedings by denying them the right to seek relief from removal in the courtroom and summarily arresting them as they exit.” ⁷⁴ The May 30, 2025 email from EOIR was also at issue in that lawsuit, insofar as it dovetailed with ICE enforcement actions at courthouses and allowed ICE to sweep up people quickly into the expedited removal system.

Following the lawsuit, EOIR issued a policy memorandum formally withdrawing the email and claiming that it never represented a binding directive to IJs on how they should rule on motions to dismiss. ⁷⁵ In a separate lawsuit, a district court judge issued a ruling prohibiting the expanded use of expedited removal in certain circumstances. In the case, Make the Road New York v. Noem, ⁷⁶ the district court determined that the expansion of expedited removal was likely a due process violation because it stripped individuals of important procedural protections. This decision limits, at least for the time being, DHS’s ability to move to dismiss removal proceedings for expedited removal.

The other tool that EOIR is utilizing to move removal proceedings along quickly is encouraging IJs to “pretermit,” or summarily dismiss applications for relief. In March 2025, EOIR issued a decision in Matter of C-A-R-R-, a case that concerned when a Form I-589 asylum application was considered to be complete. ⁷⁷ Although the decision was not entirely a negative one for the noncitizen, and resulted in a remand to the immigration court, EOIR seized on the opportunity to issue another policy memo, claiming that Matter of C-A-R-R- allows IJs wide authority to pretermit applications for relief. ⁷⁸ A second precedential decision followed in Matter of H-A-A-V, explicitly giving IJs authority to pretermit applications for relief when the I-589 does not make out a prima facie claim for relief. ⁷⁹

In addition to pretermissions based on allegedly legally insufficient I-589s, practitioners have also submitted reports of motions to pretermit filed by ICE based on Asylum Cooperative Agreements that the United States has signed with third countries. The rationale for dissolving a case in these circumstances is that an asylum seeker might lose the ability to apply for asylum in the U.S. but would be able to seek asylum in a third country, such as Uganda, Honduras, Guatemala, or Ecuador. Conveniently, the BIA issued a decision in Matter of C-G-G-M- in October 2025 that makes it nearly impossible for respondents to challenge a DHS decision to raise the safe third country agreement as a bar to asylum. ⁸⁰

All these actions demonstrate that EOIR has become more of a political than a judicial body. The best way to resolve this problem is to make the immigration courts and the BIA fully independent of the executive branch. Otherwise, it is likely that future administrations that are hostile to immigrants will likewise pursue policies that prevent individuals from having a full and fair opportunity to present their cases on the merits.

Humanitarian Immigration Programs

The Trump administration has moved to end many humanitarian programs commenced or expanded under the Biden administration. The targeting of these programs meant a huge increase in the U.S. undocumented population, with an estimated 1.5 or 1.6 million losing status that allowed them to live and work lawfully (Bustillo and Martinez-Beltrán 2025). One example is the elimination of deferred action and work authorization to those with approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) ⁸¹ under INA § 101(a)(27)(J). ⁸² These individuals have a pathway to lawful permanent residence but due to backlogs in visa availability they must typically wait for years to be able to apply for permanent residency. The administration has also worked to end categorical or country-specific parole programs, ⁸³ and to terminate TPS designations. ⁸⁴ Litigation has followed each of these actions, with varying degrees of success.

With respect to the end of deferred action and accompanying work authorization for SIJS beneficiaries, a complaint was filed in the Eastern District of New York, as a proposed nationwide class action for immigrant youth impacted by the Trump administration’s SIJS policies. ⁸⁵ For most young people with existing deferred action and employment authorization, the Administration’s policy did not strip them of their existing protections, but it did make it impossible for them to renew their deferred action and work permits. ⁸⁶ Furthermore, practitioners report that there have been cases of the administration moving to revoke deferred action that has already been granted. The district court issued a positive decision in a case called A.C.R. v. Noem, blocking the rescission of the deferred action policy. ⁸⁷ The district court’s decision is of the utmost importance to young people who are awaiting the availability of a visa number and where the delays in the case are due solely to Congress’s failure to allocate sufficient immigrant visas for immigrant youth seeking protection rather than any fault of their own. However, many practitioners report that USCIS is continuing to deny deferred action requests in the exercise of discretion.

The administration has also focused enforcement efforts on individuals who entered the United States pursuant to categorical or country-specific parole programs. For example, many individuals who entered the United States pursuant to a parole grant under CBP One received notices in their USCIS online accounts indicating that their parole had been terminated. ⁸⁸ Beneficiaries of the Parole Process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV Parole Program) also had their status abruptly cut off by publication of a Federal Register Notice. ⁸⁹ Litigation was filed challenging the mass termination of the CHNV parole program, with largely negative results. While the district court considering the case found that the termination of CHNV parole was unlawful, the Supreme Court stayed the ruling during appeal ⁹⁰ and the First Circuit later vacated the district court’s ruling, finding that the termination of CHNV parole was lawful. ⁹¹

The administration vacated TPS extensions that had already been granted, specifically extensions for Venezuela and Haiti that were given under the Biden administration. ⁹² Success in litigation challenging these terminations has overall proven to be elusive, with the Supreme Court intervening at critical junctures on the shadow docket in support of the administration. ⁹³ Unlike in its first term, the second Trump administration appears to be achieving its goals of terminating lawful status and work authorization for hundreds of thousands of TPS beneficiaries (CLINIC 2026).

In addition to the administration taking steps to terminate or weaken these existing humanitarian programs, Congress passed legislation in July 2025 adding fees to, among other applications for relief, the SIJS petition, certain types of parole applications, and TPS applications. ⁹⁴ USCIS has taken the stance that none of these fees are eligible for a fee waiver, although the fees provided for in the regulations may be eligible for fee waivers in certain situations. This legislation represents yet another obstacle for noncitizens seeking humanitarian relief in the United States.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

The fate of the Dreamers continues to be uncertain as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program remains hanging by a thread, as it has been for the past several years. By way of background, Trump tried to formally terminate DACA in his first term. In 2020, however, the Supreme Court held that the then-DHS Secretary’s decision to rescind DACA was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA. But the Court’s decision was a procedural one and did not rule on the legality of the program itself. ⁹⁵ The decision was based on extremely narrow legal grounds and left open the door to the administration’s future attempts to terminate the program. ⁹⁶

The Biden administration tried to protect and strengthen DACA by defending the program in court and issuing a final regulation codifying the DACA standards. ⁹⁷ Despite these efforts, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas found the program illegal—first in a July 2021 decision and later in a September 2023 decision that addressed the DACA final regulation. ⁹⁸ The court stayed the effective date of the order, however, preserving the status quo. The Fifth Circuit agreed with the Southern District of Texas that the DACA program is substantively unlawful, but also stayed the decision. ⁹⁹ The case is now back before the district court again and is likely to ultimately reach the Supreme Court. Curiously, the government in a September 29, 2025 brief to the district court indicated that the administration would again begin accepting initial applications for DACA, except for applicants in the state of Texas. ¹⁰⁰ This plan is subject to court approval and initial DACA applications are still not being accepted as of March 2026.

In the meantime, DACA recipients have been caught up in the heavy-handed enforcement tactics of the administration. In July, the Trump administration urged DACA recipients to “self-deport” and there have been several cases of DACA holders being detained. ¹⁰¹ It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will again attempt to terminate the program administratively. Meanwhile, DACA holders face an uncertain future before a president that, despite prior statements implying that he would help DACA recipients, has done nothing to aid them.

Refugee Ban and Pacito Litigation

At the outset of its second term, the Trump administration paused and indefinitely suspended USRAP (White House 2025b). This public/private partnership has saved more than three million lives since 1980 and has revitalized many U.S. communities (Kerwin 2018b). Resettlement has historically been available for only 1 percent of the world’s refugees, but has nonetheless long been a source of hope for refugees worldwide. The Trump administration cut the admission ceiling to an historic low (7,500) for FY 2026 and prioritized the resettlement of White Afrikaners (White House 2025h), some of whom soon returned home (Peyton and Cocks 2026). On May 21, 2026, the administration issued a presidential determination to admit an additional 10,000 Afrikaners in FY 2026 due to an alleged “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” in South Africa. However, the administration continued to ignore the more than 100,000 refugees in desperate circumstances who had previously passed through the program’s rigorous eligibility and vetting protocols, and had been approved for admission. ¹⁰² After years of waiting, these refugees need to begin anew the interminable, uncertain, often heartbreaking process of trying to find a secure and permanent home.

In an interview on April 23, 2026, Andrew Veprek, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Protection, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), affirmed that the Trump administration was “being much more deliberate about where we’re accepting refugees from” and reported that PRM’s orientation had “completely” changed “from being a humanitarian assistance bureau . . . that was in part focused on bringing people to the United Stats,” to one “focused on implementing the President’s immigration agenda, including returning people from the United States to their home countries.” ¹⁰³

The second Trump administration, even more than the first (Kerwin and Nicholson 2021, 4, 11–2), has decimated the community-based, public/private infrastructure at the heart of the program. This infrastructure was built over decades and includes faith-based and other resettlement networks.

On January 20, 2025, the administration issued an EO that placed an indefinite pause on refugee admissions and processing through USRAP (White House 2025e). The pause resulted in suspension of nearly all refugee processing at every stage, from interviews to decisions to the suspension of refugee arrivals. Resettlement agencies that provide housing, food, job placement, and other necessary services to refugees were severely impacted, with most being forced to gut their staffing.

Litigation was filed over the indefinite pause on refugee admissions in a case called Pacito v. Trump, with a district court in California issuing preliminary injunctions that provided some relief to certain refugees who had been conditionally approved for resettlement and could show reliance interests on their admission to the United States. ¹⁰⁴ Unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit issued an order staying the district court’s preliminary injunctions in their entirety, pending decision on appeal, except as to the provision of reception and placement services. ¹⁰⁵ On March 5, 2026, a Ninth Circuit panel issued a decision that largely maintained the status quo. ¹⁰⁶ Practically speaking, the refugee admission ban remains in nearly full effect.

Moreover, in January 2026, the administration initiated Operation PARRIS, which it characterized as a “landmark” fraud investigation (USCIS 2026), but which entailed the arrest and detention (far from their homes) of fully resettled and vetted refugees. It offered a meretricious legal justification for the detention of refugees, arguing that DHS (2026) can arrest and detain “unadjusted” refugees who are potentially removable or inadmissible. INA § 209(a) provides that a refugee physically present in the United States for one year who has not acquired LPR status “shall, at the end of such year period, return or be returned to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for inspection and examination for admission.” However, the statute refers not to “admission” to the U.S. (resettled refugees have already been admitted to the country), but admission to permanent residence. In addition, a resettled refugee presenting herself for inspection and examination related to an immigration application would not normally be arrested and detained. Finally, refugees do not control the time it takes to process an adjustment application, much less to acquire LPR status. Thus, they cannot possibly be held responsible for acquiring permanent residence at the exact end of a one-year period or suffer arrest and detention.

Statelessness

Under international law, a stateless person is “not considered a national by any State under the operation of its law.” ¹⁰⁷ By definition, statelessness represents an individual and collective failure of states, and in this sense is a “manufactured” condition (Jain 2022).

In a 2020 study, CMS identified thirty-seven foreign-born populations living in the United who might have stateless members (Kerwin et al. 2020). It then used profiles—based on country of origin, ethnic background, language proficiency, and date of arrival—to search for potentially stateless persons in several government datasets. It “found” in two datasets—the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and DOS’s Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System—a total of 218,000 U.S. resident non-citizens who met the characteristics of its profiles and were potentially stateless or at risk of statelessness. CMS also identified categories of foreign-born residents who did not fit within the thirty-seven profiles, but nonetheless might include stateless persons (Ibid., 191–2).

As in other countries, statelessness in the United States can be a brutal condition. U.S. stateless residents reported:

Under the Biden administration, USCIS (2023) issued guidelines in its Policy Manual, which allowed for individualized determinations of statelessness and consideration of the impact of statelessness on eligibility for immigration application and benefit requests. The Trump administration rescinded this modest policy without offering any alternative for persons who lack legal options in the United States and other nations (USCIS 2025).

The absence of a path to legal status for U.S. stateless residents, combined with the administration’s restrictive legal immigration and citizenship policies, will further increase statelessness in the United States. If the administration somehow succeeds in its attempt to revoke birthright citizenship by executive fiat, it will have created a new “two-tiered American caste system” (Stock 2012, 156), will significantly increase the U.S. undocumented population (Van Hook et al. 2025), will destroy a linchpin of the successful integration of generations of immigrant families, and will have succeeded in entrenching statelessness in the United States.

International Humanitarian Assistance

The second Trump administration could have conducted a careful review and evaluation of U.S.-funded healthcare, education, food, and other humanitarian programs. It opted instead for a chaotic and at best cursory “review” that led to massive loss of life and loss of U.S. standing in the world (Barry-Jester and Murphy 2025; Gates Foundation Goalkeepers 2026; Kenny and Sandefur 2025).

It assumed power at a time of major crises in Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, Haiti, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, the Central Sahel, and Gaza. As of 2024, 123 million persons were forcibly displaced, 73 million of them internally (UNHCR 2025b). 4.4 million persons were stateless following a UNHCR (2025b) campaign to reduce statelessness. And, low- and middle-income countries (73 percent), neighboring countries (67 percent), and the world’s “least developed countries” (at 23 percent) hosted (and continue to host) most of the world’s refugees and persons in need of international protection (p. 40).

Congress had already authorized and appropriated funding for humanitarian assistance programs in FY 2025. Yet in the course of just two months, the White House canceled 5,341, or 86 percent, of these programs, totaling $75.9 billion, without any meaningful assessment of their value or the consequences of their termination (Miolene et al. 2025).

The administration promised to offer waivers for life-saving services, which it defined via a tautology, “core to life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.” Many DOS partner agencies went through a rushed process of identifying their life-saving services, but the administration soon terminated the lion’s share of these programs, without explaining the cause or rationale for their decisions or responding to waiver requests. Congressional offices reported receiving complaints from constituents on this dysfunctional process and later expressed frustration that their offices had not received from the White House or DOS responses to their inquiries on the status of particular programs.

On July 1, 2025, the administration officially closed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency. Other developed states followed the U.S. example, cutting their aid and development assistance (Huckstep et al. 2025), and by mid-2025 only 17 percent of the $46 billion needed for humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations (UN), had been received (Larsen 2025). Official development assistance by Development Assistance Committee members fell 23.1 percent in 2025, with further cuts expected in 2026 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2026).

It soon became clear to policymakers and the public that humanitarian assistance programs saved millions of lives each year. A study published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal, found that between 2001 and 2021, USAID-funded programs had “helped prevent more than 91 million deaths globally, including 30 million deaths among children” (Cavalcante et al. 2025). The study forecasted that “deep funding cuts—combined with the potential dismantling” of USAID, “could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4·5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years” (ibid.). Another study projected an additional 2.5 million pediatric tuberculosis (TB) cases and 340,000 deaths due to cuts in U.S. bilateral health aid between 2025 and 2034 (Menzies et al. 2025).

Another team of scholars created online tracking tools to estimate anticipated mortality due to cuts in funding for “HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, neglected tropical diseases, and malnutrition” (Boston University School of Public Health 2025). As of March 2025, they projected that international assistance cuts and the elimination of USAID would lead to 383,000 deaths by June 26, 2025.

The Trump administration vehemently rejected any responsibility for the ensuing deaths and misery. Yet, it received abundant notice that this tragedy would come to pass. If there was any doubt, by mid-year, it was clear that “thousands of people” were “‘slowly starving’ in Kenyan refugee camps” in the wake of funding cuts to the UN World Food Program (WFP), which “reduced food rations to their lowest ever levels” (Soy 2025). “Emaciated children,” the BBC reported, stared “blankly at visitors” while being treated for “severe acute malnutrition” (ibid.).

By August of 2025, the WFP, Save the Children and countless other groups had warned of the dire effects of reduced food and nutrition assistance, and reporters continued to document the avoidable deaths and acute malnutrition of children, resulting from funding cuts (Princewill and Kent 2025; Soy 2025). In late 2025, ProPublica reported that reduced food rations in the Kakuma refugee camp had led to starvation, the deaths of malnourished children who “couldn’t fight off infection,” mothers forced to decide which of their children to feed, and pregnant women reduced to “eating mud” (Murphy and Barry-Jester 2025). By early 2026, the Gates Foundation attributed the first spike in child mortality (under age five) in the twenty-first century, to humanitarian assistance (mostly health) funding cuts (Gates Foundation Goalkeepers 2026). It warned of far higher death tolls if funding trends persisted.

The administration’s requested budget for F.Y. 2027 would cut international humanitarian assistance by $2 billion, refocus these resources “to reduce illegal migration and provide life-saving assistance when there is a clear, direct nexus to U.S. national interests,” and prioritize “counter migration programming” (Office of Management and Budget 2026). It would also reduce global health funding by $4.3 billion and eliminate the Food for Peace program (Saldinger 2026). The administration has regularly inveighed against “fraud and abuse” in humanitarian programs, while it has decimated the infrastructure, expertise, and nation’s ability to oversee and manage the use of these funds (Kenny 2026).

The administration did not just terminate U.S. AID programs in 2025, but also withdrew from the World Health Organization, no longer funds the UN Human Rights Council, and failed to obligate appropriated funding to many other international agencies and, by extension, to those they serve (Kenny 2025). In early 2026, it withdrew from sixty-six international organizations (White House 2026), many of which address the main causes of forced displacement; that is, war, conflict, terrorism, climate change, human rights violations, and rule of law deficits. In addition, the administration retreated from a longstanding, bi-partisan commitment to stability-building programs, such as “measures aimed at strengthening good governance, protecting minority rights, improving access to education, promoting climate change adaptation, and increasing youth employment” (McCurdy and Bradley 2025). Such programs allow persons to thrive and “stay” in their home communities or states of settlement, a goal the Trump administration would presumably share.

Collectively, these decisions decimated longstanding partnerships. They also hurt U.S. corporations and communities. USAID cuts, for example, led to lost revenue for U.S. farmers who provided roughly $2 billion a year in commodities for these programs, mostly pulse crops and small grains (Clayton 2025). China and other U.S. foes have sought to move into the resulting void, with the goal of diminishing U.S. influence in Southeast and Central Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other regions (Kurlantzick 2025).

Humanitarian and development assistance contributes to the nation’s security and global standing. National security “has historically been a major driver of U.S. foreign assistance” (Center for Strategic and International Studies 2025), particularly during and in the aftermath of conflicts in which the United States has a direct or strong interest. Development, diplomacy, and defense – the ‘three Ds’ – have traditionally been viewed as pillars of national security, as has adherence to the U.S. Constitution and the nation’s core values (Kerwin and Stock 2007a, 423-24). Yet in recent years, military expenditures have become the “default” security spending by the U.S. and other developed states. In 2024, the 10 highest defense spenders among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states devoted a combined 85 percent of their security spending to defense. This trend, exacerbated by the second Trump administration, creates an imbalance that undermines security (One 2026, 18–9). James Mattis, former Commander of U.S. Central Command and U.S. Secretary of Defense, succinctly highlighted the importance of foreign aid and diplomacy to national security: “{I]f you don’t fund the State Department fully,” he testified before the Senate Armed Service Committee, “then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately” (Silberman 2013).

Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff cautioned that the absence of essential programs could lead to “situation[s] where people are just stagnating in camps year in and year out” and create “a hospitable environment for people to recruit extremists and criminals” (Kerwin 2016, 92). For this reason, Chertoff strongly supported “a process . . . to integrate” refugees and asylees, to “get them educated, make sure they can find work so they become productive members of society and not simply embittered clusters of people who are marginalized.” (ibid.). Robust humanitarian programs—offering education, food, health care, job training, and mental health and psychosocial support services—save lives, improve the prospects, facilitate the integration, and offer children and young persons a modicum of protection against gang recruitment, trafficking, malnutrition, child marriage, and other horrors.

A Selective and Instrumental View of the Rule of Law

The rule of law figures prominently in the administration’s rhetoric, but not its practice. Instead, it treats the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes as inconveniences and impediments to immigration enforcement. As a result, it is facing a deluge of legal challenges to its executive orders and administrative actions. One litigation tracker reported 766 legal challenges as of mid-April 2026, including 142 cases related to immigration and citizenship (Just Security 2026). These include legal challenges to:

Individual habeas corpus petitions—based on claimed illegal detention—have reached record highs. As of February 2026, more than 18,000 habeas petitions had been filed during the second Trump administration—“more than were filed under the last three administrations combined.” (Rebala and Ernsthausen 2026). Federal judges have overwhelming ruled against the administration in these cases (ibid.).

Many of the administration’s practices subvert the separation of powers, the U.S. Constitution’s main check on tyranny. In particular, the Constitution vests in Congress the “power of the purse.” Yet the administration refused to obligate the lion’s share of Congressionally authorized and appropriated funding for refugee resettlement and international humanitarian assistance in FY 2025.

The administration relies upon unfitting legal authorities to justify its policies. Its principal authority for closing the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers, INA § 212(f), reads: “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” However, INA § 212(f)—which has largely been used to prevent the entry of human rights abusers and corrupt public officials—does not “override” or nullify other federal laws, including the right to request asylum (AIC 2024).

The Administration has derided the U.S. asylum system, which needed to be reformed and strengthened, not eliminated. Under federal law, any “alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum . . . ” ¹⁰⁸ Moreover, the “[t]he Attorney General shall not deport or return any alien . . . to a country if the Attorney General determines that such alien’s life or freedom would be threatened in such country . . . ” ¹⁰⁹ The Trump administration flaunts its violation of these core statutory and international standards—the right to apply for asylum and not be returned to a country where one’s life or freedom would be threatened—under the guise of law and order.

The administration also regularly asserts its need for novel (if antiquated) legal authorities. For example, it invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 ¹¹⁰ based on its (highly contested) allegations that Tren de Aragua had invaded, attempted to invade, or threatened to invade the United States, and was engaged in “irregular warfare.” The Alien Enemies Act is “a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation . . .. without a hearing and based only on their country of birth or citizenship” (Ebright 2025).

In his EO titled “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States,” President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 in an effort to secure “complete operational control of the southern border.” The Administration again threatened to invoke the Act in response to federal court decisions on its use of the National Guard in Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. (Grumbach and Gregorian 2025), which White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller characterized as a “legal insurrection.” The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion, insurrection, or civil disorder. ¹¹¹ It would allow the President to federalize the National Guard and suspend the Posse Comitatus Act, ¹¹² which prevents the U.S. military from engaging in domestic law enforcement activities.

The administration has also threatened to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus (Kinard 2025), ¹¹³ a core Constitutional check on the federal government and a central tool in safeguarding individual freedom and liberty, which has been suspended only four times in U.S. history. The “Privilege of Habeas Corpus” requires legal authorities to produce the persons in their custody and explain to neutral courts why they are holding them. The administration argues for suspension based on a (fictitious) “invasion” of migrants, while at the same time touting its success in sealing the U.S. Mexico border.

These threats multi-task. They affirm the false characterization of refugees and immigrants as invaders, criminals, and a public health menace, compared to “good” Americans. They raise the prospect of an authoritarian crackdown if Congress, the courts, or communities oppose the administration’s enforcement policies, thus enhancing the executive’s authority.

The Administration has also encroached on the legitimate authorities of states and localities. The Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” ¹¹⁴ States and, by extension, localities possess “the authority to pass and enforce criminal laws within” their borders (Leadership Center for Attorney General Studies 2026).

The administration’s claims of unfettered executive authority in response to an alleged existential crisis, its encroachment by military and federal paramilitary institutions into the daily lives of U.S. residents, and its attempt to override Constitutional protections by fiat—all under the color of law—create the kind of conditions that scholars refer to as a “state of exception” (Agamben 2005). In this state of affairs, suspension of freedoms, rights, and legal norms becomes the rule, not exception (Agamben 2005), and rule by law (whatever its content) trumps rule of law.

Cruelty as a Principle and Strategy

The administration has chosen cruel, threatening, and extreme strategies—for which it seems to believe it enjoys a political mandate—to advance its policies. Its “self-deportation” program (a misnomer) seeks to create such brutal and unforgiving conditions—enforced by military, paramilitary, and law enforcement agencies—that established U.S. residents and families will be forced to leave the country and others will not come. Its immense, growing, and opaque detention regime figures prominently in this strategy (Montoya-Galvez 2026).

The President, White House officials, and federal agency leadership set the direction and tone of U.S. immigration agencies. Rates of verbal and physical abuse of migrants, border crossers, children, and detainees have been consistently high for many years (AIC 2026b; Isacson and Martens 2023, 15–22; Reineke and Martinez 2024, 245–7; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration and Refugee Services and Center for Migration Studies of New York 2015, 171–4). The Trump administration has exacerbated these problems by replacing key staff and slashing staffing levels at its core oversight and investigative agencies (AIC 2026c, 28–30; Guttentag 2025). These include the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), the DHS Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO), the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), and the ICE and CBP Offices of Professional Responsibility (OPR). It has also undermined the authority of investigative offices and law enforcement agencies by immediately mischaracterizing as “domestic terrorists” Renee Nicole Good killed by ICE agents on January 7, 2026 and Alex Pretti killed on January 24, 2026 (Gibson 2026).

ICE has detained immigrants in a rapidly growing network of overcrowded, deliberately punitive tent cities and prison-like facilities, such as “Camp East Montana” in El Paso, “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades (AI 2025, 33–42), and the ICE facility in Broadview, a village west of Chicago (Dholakia 2025; Fernando 2025; Masterson 2025). It has both deported immigrants and released them in the United States without returning their possessions, such as identification, phones, and medicine. This practice has made it difficult for deportees and those released to travel, eat, establish their identity, and communicate with their families.

The troubled U.S. detention system has grown dramatically over the years, but is now in the midst of unprecedented expansion, driven by untethered funding increases and the administration’s policies to require detention in broad categories of cases. For most of U.S. history, mandatory detention (without the possibility of release) applied only at U.S. borders (Holper 2026, 718–24). The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, ¹¹⁵ followed by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, ¹¹⁶ the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, ¹¹⁷ and IIRIRA expanded mandatory detention and the criminal grounds for removal. The Laken Riley Act of 2025 mandated detention based on arrest for crimes, including “burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, assaulting a police officer, or crimes that result in death or serious bodily injury” (CLINIC 2025).

In the wake of IIRIRA’s passage, the number of INS detention beds per night swelled from roughly 8,600 to 16,000 (Kerwin and Wheeler 1998). After rising over many years, the number of immigrant detainees fell to 14,200 a night at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (TRACImmigration 2025). The helter-skelter expansion of the detention system since January 2025 has included reopening closed prisons and detention centers (Levin 2025); the use of military bases (AIC 2026b); and the purchase and re-purposing of massive warehouses, several exceeding a million square feet (O’Connell and MacMillan 2026; Rahman 2026; Hollingsworth 2026). It has been driven, in part, by the administration’s policy to mandate the detention of all non-citizens who entered the country without inspection (Holper 2026, 749–50). By early 2026, ICE held roughly 75,000 per night (Hollingsworth 2026), more than a four-fold increase in five years, with grave consequences for the health and well-being of those in its custody (Pillai et al. 2025). It plans to expand to 92,600 beds per night in 2026 (USICE 2026c). By one estimate, it has been resourced to expand to 135,000 beds (AIC 2026c, 43–6).

The budget reconciliation process, resulting in H.R. 1, provided $45 billion for immigrant detention, ¹¹⁸ The expanded detention system has created a financial windfall for private prison corporations (Eisen 2026; HRF and RAICES 2026, 6), which in 2025 administered facilities housing nearly 90 percent of detainees (Dholakia 2025; TRACImmigration 2025). This growth comes at a time when the detention system is failing by the most fundamental of metrics, detainee deaths (AIC 2026a; Bustillo and Mukherjee 2025; Pillai et al. 2026), with a disproportionately high number occurring in Florida facilities (AI 2025, 36, 44). Deaths by suicide have risen dramatically, including two in Florida, in the second Trump administration (Blanes and Healy 2026).

Cruelty also underlies the decimation of USRAP. It would have been well within the administration’s authorities to conduct a thorough and deliberate review of U.S. resettlement program. Instead, its suspension of the resettlement program entailed the intentional, heart-breaking exclusion of more than 100,000 refugees approved for admission, who subsequently needed to begin anew the arduous, multi-year, often unsuccessful journey to find a permanent, secure home. The Presidential Determination (PD) for FY 2026 provides a record low admissions ceiling (7,500) of mostly Afrikaners. Following the shooting in Washington, D.C. of two National Guard members by an Afghan national, the administration announced plans to “review” (retroactively) the cases of 230,000 fully vetted refugees admitted during the Biden administration.

The Administration not only effectively ended access to asylum at the US-Mexico border, but suspended already scheduled asylum interviews—made via CBP One App—of persons who had endured unlivable conditions in their home communities, abuse, rape, and extortion in transit, and protracted, open-ended stays in dangerous Mexican border cities while waiting for their interviews in the United States (Watson and Janetsky 2025).

The administration’s actions have also led to cruelty against children. It has reduced protections for minors seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile status, making it harder for them to obtain protection and to navigate the immigration court process. ¹¹⁹ It has attempted to illegally remove children in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to their home countries, before being blocked from doing so by court order (Bower 2025). It has allowed for immigration enforcement even at sensitive locations such as schools, where children are likely to be present and either witness the arrest of a caregiver or be caught themselves (KIND 2026). This has been illustrated most poignantly by the case of five-year old Liam Ramos, who was arrested alongside his father in Minneapolis and sent to a family detention center in Minneapolis (Griffith 2026). The photo of a distraught five-year old boy wearing a blue knit cap with white bunny ears and carrying a Spider Man backpack, standing next to an ICE agent, became an iconic symbol of the administration’s cruelty. Much like the family separation policy of the first Trump administration, the mistreatment of children is not an unintended consequence but rather part of a deliberate strategy to make life so unbearable for families that they will “choose” not to stay and fight their cases.

Thomas Homan has argued that family separation can be avoided by deporting entire families (Haner 2024). Yet ICE cannot legally deport U.S. citizens, and mass deportation will invariably separate families. In the administration’s first seven months alone, immigration authorities arrested and detained the parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children (Ernsthausen et al. 2026). Such families face the grim option of whether to leave the country together, or to leave behind lawfully present family members, including U.S. citizen minors, thus severing parent-child ties.

Hostility to the Poor and Persecuted

Since the beginning of his first presidential campaign, President Trump has rhetorically championed and presented himself as the leader of a unique coalition of forgotten and abused Americans. However, his policies have overwhelmingly favored the wealthy and elite. In an act of betrayal and moral inversion, the administration’s signature second-term legislative success, H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, primarily benefits the nation’s richest households, extending tax cuts for the very wealthy at a projected cost of $3.3 trillion between 2026 and 2034. It will also cut Medicaid and a range of benefits for millions of lawfully present persons in the “largest legislative roll-back of health coverage” in history and one that will lead to the shuttering of mostly rural hospitals and health clinics (Brownstein 2025).

In addition, H.R. 1 stripped several legally present immigrant groups of eligibility for SNAP (Food Stamps), CHIP, Medicaid, Medicare. These included refugees, asylees, Afghan evacuees, TPS recipients, humanitarian parolees, survivors of trafficking and domestic violence. On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a proposed rule that would lead to the separation or eviction of mixed-status families from HUD-assisted housing. The rule defined mixed-status families to include U.S. citizens and at least one resident with an ineligible status, including certain lawfully present temporary residents. ¹²⁰ At present, HUD prorates benefits so that ineligible persons do not receive them. The rule would exclude entire families from public housing programs.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, H.R. 1 will decrease resources for households in the lowest income decile by an average of $1,200 per year (3.1 percent of their income), while increasing the income of those in the highest decile by $13,000 per year (2.7 percent of their income; Swagel 2025, 4–6). It will also drive up the federal debt by an estimated $3 trillion (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget 2025), passing on this already untenable burden to future generations of Americans.

The administration’s mass deportation creates roughly the same economic dynamic—the impoverishment of U.S. mixed-status families (Lisiecki and Apruzzese 2025; Warren and Kerwin 2017), a financial windfall for private contractors, particularly for-profit prison corporations and former DHS employees (Friedman et al. 2025; Hollingsworth and Hannah 2025), and immense costs to the public (current and future).

The administration has proven to be an unreliable partner to the many states and institutions with which it partnered for decades in serving the world’s neediest persons. In addition, it has betrayed, sought to betray, or disillusioned:

The removal of U.S. residents to CECOT represented a particularly sinister development. After a staged media appearance filmed in front of caged prisoners at CECOT, former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem thanked El Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele for “bringing our terrorists here and incarcerating them” (a false characterization) and called the notorious prison “one of the tools in our toolbox” (Grant 2025).

The United States has also failed to live up to its commitments—to U.S. citizens, immigrants, families, and communities—to uphold its own immigration laws. Instead, it has deliberately “flooded the zone” with misinformation, distractions, and the chaos of deliberately punitive, constantly changing laws and policies which even experienced immigration attorneys have difficulty following or understanding. It has also prevented eligible non-citizens from advancing to permanent residence and naturalization, as the law allows.

Mass deportation—premised on making conditions so harsh and terrifying that immigrants (undocumented and others) and their family members will leave the country—has prevented a large cohort of U.S. residents, including persons awaiting legal proceedings, persons in visa backlogs, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens in mixed-status families from accessing government services, benefits, and processes to which they are entitled. Mass deportation presents mixed-status families with only poor options. They can either separate or their U.S. citizen and LPR members can become “de facto deportees” who accompany deported family members abroad (Hamilton et al. 2025; Kanstroom 2007, 135–6).

One of mass deportation’s worst features is its “disregard” for the legal systems and norms—state, federal, and international—intended to protect families (Kanstroom 2007, 136). But the second Trump administration’s particular iteration of mass deportation has been so slipshod and callous that even U.S. citizen children—in families that wish to be removed together—have been left behind (Isacson and Flórez 2025).

Failure to Meet the Challenge

It has been widely recognized for decades that the U.S. immigration system needs to be reformed, and there have been several bipartisan to do so (Lofton 2026). For its part, the second Trump administration has failed to: (1) articulate an integrated approach to international migration that would prioritize working with other states and civil society groups to create conditions that would allow potential forced migrants to remain in their home communities, or return home; (2) create sufficient legal migration pathways for those who cannot safely stay or return; (3) prioritize fixing widely-acknowledged problems in the U.S. immigration system, such as visa and immigration court backlogs; or (4) champion a legal immigration system that reflects U.S. interests and values.

At best, the administration’s policies disregard the life-saving contributions of international humanitarian assistance and development programs (White House 2025g). The administration also ignores the myriad contributions of immigrants and refugees to the United States, which past administrations and Congresses recognized (Kerwin and Warren 2017, 298–301). Instead, it has decimated humanitarian assistance programs, refugee resettlement, asylum, and the U.S. legal immigration system. The latter prioritizes family unity, work, and protection of persons who would be imperiled if returned to their home communities.

An integrated approach to international migration has far more potential to meet the nation’s interests over time—including in a secure, regulated border—than mass deportation. The latter will devastate the 4.7 million U.S. households who “are home to undocumented residents and US citizens or others with legal status” (Lisiecki and Apruzzese 2025). If “successful,” mass deportation will lead to the loss of 7.6 million undocumented residents from the U.S. labor force, with disastrous consequences for the U.S. economy, particularly for the industries and occupations in which these workers are concentrated (Costa et al. 2025; Lisiecki 2025; Lisiecki and Apruzzese 2025). It will also diminish their substantial contributions to federal retirement programs (Rachamallu 2025).

The administration has attacked and undermined the U.S. legal immigration system, but failed to articulate or champion a system that would maximize the widely-acknowledge contributions of refugees and immigrants to the country’s well-being—its economy, families, faith communities, and emblematic values. In addition, its failure to fix longstanding problems in the legal immigration system undermines the integrity of the broader immigration system (Kerwin and Warren 2019a). As of November 1, 2023, for example, more than four million cases of persons deemed prima facie eligible for a visa languished in multi-year visa backlogs (DOS 2023). A substantial number of persons in visa backlogs are also ensnared in immigration court backlogs. However, they would not be in removal proceedings or subject to mass deportation if they had received a visa in a timely manner (Kerwin and Millet 2023, 206–07).

Immigration status influences the integration of immigrants, their children, and their progeny across generations (NAS 2015, 94–5, 118–24). The ability to advance in status to permanent residence and citizenship allows immigrants to integrate, participate, and contribute more fully in their communities and country (ibid.). For this reason, naturalization should be “an organizing goal of the U.S. immigration system and an expectation for new Americans” (Kerwin et al. 2021, 245). By contrast, the Trump administration seeks to eliminate birthright citizenship, whose beneficiaries will have contributed a projected $7.7 trillion to the U.S. economy between 1975 and 2074 (Connor et al. 2026).

To an even greater degree than the first Trump administration, the second Trump administration has erected a “paper wall” to prevent immigrants from gaining and advancing in immigration status. This second wall consists of:

In addition, the Trump administration has taken decisive steps to unsettle even well-vetted refugees, LPRs, and U.S. citizens. The most disruptive administration in memory vowed to prioritize denaturalization cases, including of naturalized citizens who undermine “domestic tranquility” (Tumulty 2025). In late 2025, the DOJ Office of Immigration Litigation (OIL) urged USCIS field offices to identify 100–200 denaturalization cases per month (Aleaziz 2025). Raising additional concerns, the president has threatened to denaturalize – a process deployed sparingly in recent U.S. history – his critics, political foes, and disfavored national groups (Sutherland 2026). On May 8, 2026, OIL filed the first of what will likely be many more denaturalization cases against 12 persons (Cuevas 2026). Whatever the merits of individual cases, the push to denaturalize will further unsettle and marginalize foreign-born residents.

The U.S. immigration system depends on the hiring and retention of high-quality, well-trained staff. However, staff hiring and turnover have been longstanding challenges for DHS enforcement agencies, particularly CBP. As in past eras of enforcement growth, the administration’s planned supersizing of ICE and CBP will likely lead to higher incidences of corruption and misconduct (Nowrasteh 2025). Exacerbating matters, DHS’s job announcements for CBP and ICE agents have emphasized modest qualifications, significant bonuses, and the need to stem an invasion. They also regularly claim a divine mandate for ICE’s work (André 2025). In a particularly troubling development, according to a whistle blower report, the Trump administration cut 240 hours of training for ICE recruits, and eliminated training on the use of force, due process and other Constitutional imperatives (Bennett and Anderson 2026). The danger is that new recruits will not fully understand their lawful duties or how to conduct themselves.

CBP’s hiring challenges have included abysmal polygraph test pass rates: 25 percent from FY 2015 to FY 2017, and between 28 percent and 40 percent between FY 2018 and the first six-months of FY 2024. These compare to a 66 percent pass rate for Federal Bureau of Investigation applicants from FY 2018 through FY 2023 and 56 percent for Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) applicants (U.S. Government Accountability Office [2024], 30–2). CBP has regularly failed to achieve its staffing goals due to “high attrition rates in some locations, a lengthy hiring process, and competition from other law enforcement agencies,” and has “consistently ranked low in employee morale” (ibid., 2).

Humanitarian Assistance

The President and Congress should restore funding beyond FY 2024 levels ($8.7 billion) for U.S. international humanitarian assistance based on the immense need for these programs and their myriad benefits to the affected populations, the United States, and the world. It should prioritize initiatives that save lives, promote stability, center the participation of refugees, and afford (1) potential migrants the possibility to thrive in their countries of origin or settlement, and (2) forcibly displaced persons to integrate into their communities of settlement, return safely and voluntarily to their countries of origin, or otherwise reach a safe, permanent home.

As part of this commitment, the Trump administration and Congress should prioritize rebuilding DOS’s decimated humanitarian assistance infrastructure, so that it can “effectively program, manage, and monitor humanitarian assistance funding.” ¹²¹ In addition, Congress should publicize effective programs and explain to the public that overseas humanitarian assistance funding has historically accounted for only 1 percent of U.S. spending (McCabe and Gill 2025).

Congress and the next administration should commission a comprehensive assessment and report on the loss of lives and the effects on U.S. security, the nation’s standing, and global stability of U.S. humanitarian assistance funding cuts during the second Trump administration.

Legal Immigration and Citizenship

Legal immigration reform should prioritize rebuilding an integrated core of strengthened refugee resettlement, asylum, humanitarian parole, and TPS programs. Such programs save lives, produce vital workers, and will help to rebuild the United States’ global standing.

The Trump administration and Congress should reform the U.S. legal immigration system in ways that make it more responsive to the needs of struggling U.S. communities, U.S. families seeking to reunify or remain intact, the U.S. labor market, and (in particular) the industries and occupations that rely disproportionately on refugees and immigrants (Costa et al. 2025; Kerwin and Nicholson 2021).

Congress should pass and the President should sign into law legislation that would reduce multi-year visa backlogs. This can be accomplished by increasing per country visa caps, expanding the number of visas in oversubscribed visa preference categories, and not counting derivative family members against country and annual quotas (Kerwin and Warren 2019a, 41). The bi-partisan Dignity Act of 2025 ¹²² would reduce backlogs, for example, in cases of persons with approved visa petitions by raising the percentage of family- and employment-based visas available to persons from any one country per year from 7 percent to 15 percent, ¹²³ and by allocating additional visas for beneficiaries of approved immigrant visa petitions subject to long-term backlogs.

It serves the nation’s interests in countless ways—economic, family, social, cultural, demographic—when immigrants can gain and advance in status, naturalize, and fully integrate into the nation’s life (Kerwin et al. 2021). The administration and DHS should establish a clear, predictable path to permanent residency and naturalization, eliminating excessive fees, income requirements, processing barriers, and extreme vetting, with the aim of promoting citizenship as an organizing principle of the legal immigration system (ibid., 202, 245–6).

Registry

Congress should pass and the President should sign into law a bill that allows long-term U.S. residents with good moral characters to legalize status, obviating the need for the costly and divisive mass deportation. A legalization program would relieve the pressure on the immigration enforcement system and focus federal law enforcement agencies on serious threats to public safety and national security (Stein 2025). It would also allow the President and Congress to “right size” DHS’s enforcement agencies, As it stands, H.R. 1’s additional $170.7 billion in enforcement funding through FY 2029 means that the challenges to civil liberties, federalism, public safety, and the integrity of U.S. communities posed by mass deportation will only intensify without dramatic reform (AIC 2025).

The most effective legalization program would update the eligibility cut-off date for a “registry” program that has been on the books since 1929. ¹²⁴ The Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929 (H.R. 4696 and S. 2468) ¹²⁵ would amend existing law to allow U.S. undocumented residents to apply to legalize their status if they have good moral character and entered the United States at least seven years earlier. The 1929 Act recognized that U.S. legal immigration policies would never capture all of the U.S. residents who deserved to stay, and that there should be provision for certain long-term residents to “register” and legalize their status.

Congress has since advanced the entry cut-off for this program several times, most recently in 1986 when it moved forward the date from June 30, 1948 to January 1, 1972. At present, an undocumented person applying for registry would need to have resided continuously in the United States for fifty-four years to qualify. Advancing the registry cut-off date for law-abiding, long-term residents would benefit the economy, businesses, U.S. families, communities, public safety, and security.

As of 2024, 34 percent of U.S. undocumented residents had lived in the United States for at least fifteen years and 44 percent for at least ten years (CMS and Humphrey School of Public Affairs 2026). An updated registry program would allow essential workers, parents of U.S. citizens, and other undocumented residents to come forward and be fully screened and vetted. Counter-terror officials have long argued that legalization, combined with rigorous vetting, would allow for better, more orderly targeting of bad actors (Kerwin and Stock 2007a, 2007b). In colloquial terms, it would drain the pond, leaving the small number of invasive fish (posing a danger), which could be more easily removed.

An updated registry program would also recognize deficiencies and anomalies in the U.S. immigration system. For example, statutes of limitations exist for federal and state criminal and civil offenses in order to promote finality, predictability, and the use of timely evidence (Ordonez 2022, 1823–5). However, there has not been a statute of limitations for unlawful entry since 1952 (ibid.). This anomaly contributes to backlogs and other stresses in the U.S. immigration system. In addition, long-term U.S. residents invariably fall through the cracks of the legal immigration system and their families, in particular, suffer from their removal.

Nearly a century ago, at the height of an earlier era of anti-immigrant sentiment, Congress created a legal mechanism (registry), which acknowledged and sensibly addressed these problems on a case-by-case basis (Boswell 2010). However, it has ignored and failed to update its own law—via a one-sentence bill—over a forty-year period. It should do so now.

Enforcement and Legal Authorities

DHS has long enjoyed sufficient authorities and funding to enforce the law and carry out its other legally-mandated responsibilities. Congress should set immigration enforcement funding at levels that prioritize: (1) the apprehension and removal of convicted criminals, and persons who present a public safety or national security risk; (2) detention of persons who threaten public safety, national security, or themselves. Congress should condition enforcement funding on the suspension of the sweeping, indiscriminate enforcement and mandatory detention practices, which have destabilized U.S. communities. James Madison (1800) characterized removal as “among the severest of punishments” and one that must be accompanied by constitutional protections. The administration and Congress should treat enforcement and due process as complementary imperatives.

They should also recommit USCIS to its core responsibility of processing and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits (USCIS), and EOIR to adjudicating removal cases in ways that uphold due process. Both agencies have enforcement responsibilities, but neither should serve as an adjunct of the U.S. enforcement system. Nor should other federal agencies, such as the FBI.

The administration—along with DHS and DOJ leadership—and Congress should prioritize strengthening federal agencies and departments charged with upholding constitutional rights, the rule of law, and agency enforcement standards, and with investigating complaints related to violations of these standards. In particular, the administration and Congress should invest in strong, well-resourced, professionally-staffed, and a transparent DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, DHS Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, DHS Office of Inspector General, and ICE and CBP Offices of Professional Responsibility.

DHS should restore the “sensitive locations policy,” which limits enforcement near hospitals, schools, courts, and other locations. Congress should pass the President should sign into law the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, S.455 and H.R. 1061, which provides that immigration enforcement actions “may not take place, be focused on a location, or occur, within 1,000 feet of a sensitive location, except under exigent circumstances.”

Congress should utilize its oversight authority to investigate and report on deaths and abuses in the immigrant detention system. The administration and DHS should reinstitute and ensure compliance with rigorous detention standards, including a religious standard that applies wherever DHS holds non-citizens in custody, including contract facilities. A religious liberty standard should allow detainees to receive religious and pastoral care and otherwise to practice their faith. It should also allow faith communities to access detention facilities and minister to their flocks.

Legal Authorities

The White House should not deploy the Insurrection Act of 1807, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, or other unfitting legal authorities. Congress should instead pass and the President should sign into law the Insurrection Act of 2025, ¹²⁶ which provides that “domestic deployment of the armed forces . . . should be a last resort and should be ordered only if State and local authorities in the State concerned are unable or otherwise fail to suppress the insurrection or rebellion, quell the domestic violence, or enforce the laws that are being obstructed, and Federal civilian law enforcement authorities are unable to do so.”

Immigration Courts

Congress should pass and the President should sign into law legislation to create an independent immigration court system, which resides outside of DOJ (ABA 2010, 6-26-6-40) and that is not as susceptible to political influence. Unfortunately, massive increases in immigration enforcement funding have been accompanied by a strategy to transform the immigration courts primarily into an enforcement, rather than an adjudicatory body.

Congress should appropriate funding that supports significant, multi-year funding increases to EOIR, for immigration judge teams (Kerwin and Kerwin 2024). The goal should be to eliminate the immigration court backlog over a five-year period, not through the summary dismissal or coerced abandonment of cases, but through their fair adjudication by competent, independent judges, leading to removal of those ordered removed.

Congress and the administration should address the longstanding problems in the U.S. system as a whole that contribute to the court backlog. In particular, it should:

Statelessness

The United States should prioritize preventing and reducing statelessness. Subsequent administrations should uphold the Constitution and strongly affirm birthright citizenship for all children born in the United States.

Congress should pass and the President should sign into law a bill akin to the Stateless Protection Act of 2024, ¹²⁷ which offers stateless persons protection from deportation, the ability to work and travel, release from detention, and a path to permanent residence.

Making America Great Again and Protection of Persecuted

This paper has been written at a volatile and uncertain time in the nation’s life. The great historian of U.S. nativism Higham (1970, 4) wrote that the “ideological core of nativism in every form” is a belief that “some influence originating from abroad threaten[s] the very life of the nation from within.” A large majority of Americans support border enforcement, rigorous screening of those seeking to enter the country, and the removal of non-citizens with criminal records who pose a threat to the nation’s safety and security. Yet as the paper argues, the Trump administration’s policies go well-beyond robust enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. They threaten the nation’s character and well-being “from within.”

The administration has proven adept at tearing down U.S. humanitarian, refugee, and immigration policies at great cost in lost lives, lost prospects, lost partners, and lost standing. It has initiated a war that has already forcibly displaced tens of thousands of persons and that will displace countless more. It has engaged in a mass deportation campaign rife with brutality and constitutional violations. It has threatened even more draconian and repressive policies in the future. It has sought to deny birthright citizenship—guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and central to the integration of generations of immigrants—by executive fiat.

The president recently reposted a blatantly racist video about former president Barack Obama and first lady Michele Obama on his truth social account (Shivaram 2026). He has repeatedly attacked Pope Leo XIV in response to the Holy Father’s appeals for peace and reconciliation. The president also posted an AI generated picture of himself as a Christ-like figure, then implausibly claimed he had thought the picture depicted him as a doctor.

A good first step in making “America great again” would be to rebuild strengthened, secure, and well-resourced asylum and refugee resettlement programs. Such an accomplishment would reflect America’s greatness as a place of asylum “to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong” (Washington 1788). It would honor the nation’s identity as a “beacon” and a “a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home” (Reagan 1989). Following World War II, the Vietnam war, and over its long history, the United States has been “great” when it has protected refugees, displaced persons, and asylum-seekers. When it turned away Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on the S.S. St. Louis, it betrayed its values. It is betraying its values now.

A recommitment to refugees and asylees would honor the religious, philosophical, and legal imperative to offer protection and hospitality to imperiled persons. In ancient Greek and Roman culture, hospitality to the stranger served as a “measure,” “general statement” and “gauge” of a society’s “‘civilization’ or humanity” (Isayev 2017, 76, 88). The “actions and decisions within host-guest encounters determined (and perhaps still determine) the positioning of a society on the spectrum of just, civilized or barbarian” (ibid., 78).

Religious leaders have affirmed that the teaching to “’welcome the stranger,’ through protection and hospitality . . . is deeply rooted in all major religions” (UNHCR 2014). This teaching honor the sacred duty to protect human life. Asylum can be found in defining religious narratives, such as the protection and hospitality extended to the Prophet Muhammed after his flight from persecution in Mecca to Medina. Under Islamic law, the persecuted enjoy “a right to find refuge on the earth, a right which has been conferred by God, and which their fellow humans have a duty to fulfil” (Islamic Relief Worldwide 2014, 10). In Hinduism, the “moral life” entails “working for the well-being of others,” and its core values of compassion and generosity must “guide” the response to refugees (Rambachan 2017). In Hebrew Scripture, God enjoins the Jewish people to “treat the alien who resides with you no differently than natives born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33). The Holy Family seeks protection in Egypt from an evil king. Jesus relies on hospitality in his peripatetic ministry. He instructs his disciples to follow his example and “take nothing” in their ministries, but a walking stick, single tunic, and sandals (Mark 6: 7–11).

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—building on this long tradition—recognizes the right “to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” ¹²⁸ The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees ¹²⁹ and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugee prohibit states from returning refugees to places where their “life or freedom would be threatened” on an enumerated ground. U.S. law largely mirrors international law in this area, providing that non-citizens may seek asylum “irrespective of such alien’s status,” ¹³⁰ and the U.S. will not deport (return) to a country where their “life or freedom would be threatened . . .” ¹³¹

As detailed in this paper, the Trump administration has violated these laws in multiple ways. It is turning away, removing, and returning persons who seek the only protection legally available to them. It has eviscerated and made a mockery of the nation’s once-proud resettlement program. Restoring its leadership in protecting and welcoming refugees would be a good first step in making America great—and in making it America again.