Urgent Threats to the Immigration System in the First 100 Days of a New Trump Administration

Within the first 100 days of a second term, Donald Trump will impose far-reaching changes on the immigration system, as outlined in Project 2025 and on the campaign trail. His first term saw over 400 executive actions that dismantled the system, terminated legal status for Dreamers and others, and spurred chaos at the border, including harsh orders in his first 100 days that banned travelers from Muslim-majority countries and began the failed construction of an ineffective border wall. In 2025, he’ll likely reverse the Biden-Harris administration’s progress, with swift orders to strip protections from Dreamers and immigrants with temporary legal status, dismantle legal pathways, and drastically expand immigration enforcement inside the U.S. His agenda will go beyond mass deportations, targeting birthright citizenship, limiting public support access for millions of U.S. citizen children, and intensifying militarized immigration enforcement.

1. Day One Executive Overhaul: Ending Protections and Lawful Pathways

• Rescind Biden-era enforcement priorities: ICE and CBP will gain expanded powers to detain and deport immigrants, including those with expiring humanitarian protections.
• Target public supports: Trump will renew efforts to restrict children in mixed-status families from accessing public supports. In 2019, his restrictive public charge rule had a profound chilling effect on immigrant families’ access to health care, food assistance, and housing support.
• Restrict lawful immigration and refugee processes: Trump plans to temporarily suspend the U.S. refugee admissions program and then slash refugee admissions to a record low cap of 15,000—down from the 100,000 resettled by Biden-Harris in FY2024.

2. Stripping Constitutional and Humanitarian Protections

• Terminate legal status by ending programs such as the CHNV parole program, “Keeping Families Together,” “Uniting for Ukraine,” “Operation Allies Welcome,” and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) protections, stripping legal status and work authorization for more than 1.5 million people.
• Challenge birthright citizenship and the right to public education, established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Plyler v. Doe, threatening the rights of over 1 million undocumented children.
• Gutting the asylum process: Policies like “Remain in Mexico” (MPP) will likely return, forcing asylum seekers to remain in dangerous conditions while awaiting decisions.

3. Expanding Detention and Deportation Operations

• Expanded detention and expedited removals: Trump will ramp up detention capacity, effectively deputize local law enforcement to act as immigration agents through increased use of 287(g) agreements, expedited removal and other tools, and reinstate policies that undermine due process protections at the border like the Prompt Asylum Claim Review and the Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (PACR/HARP).

By targeting millions of hardworking and long-settled immigrants, Donald Trump threatens to undermine the local communities where they live and destabilize the economies they contribute to across the country. His punitive agenda is only the beginning of the broader threat that he poses to the country, endangering democracy and the core values that define America. It is imperative that Democrats stand united to defend these principles and protect immigrant communities from these regressive policies.

The Immigration Hub is a national organization dedicated to advancing fair and just immigration policies through strategic leadership, innovative communications strategies, legislative advocacy and collaborative partnerships.