Former President Trump’s allies are in the process of drafting an unprecedented plan to crack down on illegal immigration, aiming to assist the Republican presidential candidate in addressing immigration issues, including transferring asylum seekers to other countries.
According to reports from The Wall Street Journal, a group of former Trump administration officials, Trump supporters, and conservative immigration experts are drafting executive orders, policy memorandums, and other documents to turn campaign slogans into policy.
Their goal is to be prepared in advance so that on Trump’s first day in office, they can prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, dismantle President Biden’s immigration agenda, and lay the groundwork for what former President Trump called the largest expulsion of illegal immigrants in American history.
Participants in this plan are discussing major issues, including how to expedite immigration asylum hearings to more quickly determine whether individuals meet the criteria for deportation; how to cancel deportation protection measures set up by the Biden administration for hundreds of thousands of immigrants; and how to encourage countries worldwide to accept more of their own citizens who are deported.
People involved in this work say that external consultants have begun searching in South America (including Panama) and Africa for potential new asylum agreement partners. In 2020, the Trump administration reached a short-term agreement with Guatemala to deport about 1,000 immigrants from El Salvador and Honduras to seek asylum in the neighboring country of Guatemala.
Trump advisors aim to restart this practice, inspired by an agreement reached by the UK and Rwanda in 2022. The agreement allows the UK to send asylum seekers to East African countries, but due to legal challenges, the plan has not yet been implemented.
In terms of the plan’s scope, Trump’s external advisors have begun to address obstacles they may face in implementing deportation actions. This has become a hallmark commitment regarding immigration issues for Trump’s 2024 campaign.
A former senior official from the Trump administration stated, “The logistical challenges will be immense.”
In addition to recruiting enough personnel to apprehend illegal immigrants and opening sufficient detention facilities to detain them, another significant obstacle is imminent: immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during the Biden administration are currently not legally eligible for deportation, and many of the home countries of those who can be deported do not accept them.
The executive measures that Trump’s advisors plan to implement are designed to circumvent these restrictions without the need for congressional action.
Deportation actions may require billions of dollars in new funding, which could come from Congress or be reallocated from the Pentagon.
One question remains: who will lead this effort. Currently, Trump’s vocal supporters are vying for senior immigration officials positions in preparation for Trump’s return to the White House. Stephen Miller, the main architect of Trump’s immigration agenda during his first term, is widely expected to return to the Trump administration to oversee immigration affairs.
Tom Homan, who led U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration, is a potential candidate for Secretary of Homeland Security, playing the role of “border czar,” a position that does not require Senate confirmation.
Other senior candidates for positions include former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, former Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan, and former Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Joe Edlow.
Homan stated that if the government were to offer him a position, he would actively consider it. He said, “I agree with the President’s view: this must be a historic deportation action because we have already had historic waves of immigration.”
Discussions about Trump’s second term immigration agenda are underway within conservative groups, including the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation, both managed by former Trump administration officials. The latter is responsible for overseeing Project 2025, a plan developed by several right-wing organizations for the next Republican administration.
Rob Law, Director of Homeland Security and Immigration Affairs at the America First Policy Institute, confirmed that the organization has begun discussions and research on relevant executive orders.
Discussions among other groups are informal, with participants including Trump campaign officials and Trump himself, but not directly affiliated with these organizations.
The Trump campaign team stated that external organizations have no authority to speak on behalf of the former president.
Senior officials from these external organizations are confident that if Trump wins the election, at least part of the draft plan they have prepared will be implemented. However, they hope to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016, when Trump suddenly fired his presidential transition team leader, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose team had prepared numerous plans that went unimplemented.
Trump has stated that on his first day back in the White House, he will issue an executive order to “close the border.” While this statement may shock constitutional scholars and many Democrats, it also indicates that the former president and his advisors are eager to take administrative actions on immigration shortly after his reinstatement.
According to close associates of Trump, this move mirrors Biden’s actions on his first day in office in 2021, when he signed pre-written orders to halt the construction of Trump’s border wall, revoke the travel ban on citizens from predominantly Muslim countries, and end the “Remain in Mexico” border policy.
Trump is likely to overturn these measures and several other immigration initiatives of Biden on his first day in office.
Trump has recently stated that his goal is to deport 20 million people. Coordinating such a large-scale deportation action would require the collaboration of all levels of government and the military. Advisors are eyeing military bases to expand detention capacity and are planning to authorize red-state governors to deploy the National Guard, increase the number of immigration officials to apprehend illegal immigrants. The former president and his advisors are also discussing utilizing local and state law enforcement agencies to assist in this effort.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump promised to build a wall along most of the U.S.-Mexico border, a project that was far from completion during his tenure. In his campaign speeches eight years ago, he also promised large-scale deportations, but during his presidency, the number of immigrants deported annually was only in the hundreds of thousands, a small figure compared to the approximately 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. during his tenure.
A spokesperson from the Biden campaign, Ammar Moussa, called Trump’s immigration plan cruel, anti-American, and ineffective. He said, “When it comes to border issues, the American people want solutions, but Trump only seeks to create chaos.”
(This article references reports from The Wall Street Journal)