On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed 26 executive orders, at least seven of them directly aimed at changing immigration policies, including one that threatens to strip birthright citizenship of U.S. born children of immigrants, overturning a 127-year legal precedent. To implement the executive orders, administrative agencies have issued a slew of memoranda and orders suspending funding, stopping work, rewriting guidelines, and ending vital programs. Under the guise of promoting government efficiency, thousands of federal civil servants were laid off, fired, and offered fake buy-outs. The massive shake-up of the federal workforce includes the termination of the leadership of the Executive Office for Immigration Review that oversees the immigration court system and immigration judges at a time when there are more than 3.5 million case backlogs.  A theme emerges from this administration’s policy toward immigration: let no one in and kick everyone out— even at the expense of violating fundamental constitutional principles of due process and equal protection. This post summarizes the key executive actions, the status of their implementation and their impacts on the immigrant community.

LET NO ONE IN

    • Long view of a steel border wall under clear skies, emphasizing solitude and division.Declare a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border and declare that an invasion exists on the southern border

        • Direct the military to make it a priority to “seal the border,”

        • Department of Homeland Security issued a finding of mass influx on the southern border despite a significant decrease in the number of arrivals

    • Using “national emergency” to justify the President’s expansion of war power to deploy military forces, land, and equipment to enforce immigration law

        • More than 21 military deportation flights since January 20, 2025

        • The use of military cargo planes for deportation costs at least 350% more than charter flights with one-third fewer people on board

        • Migrants were shackled, chained around their waist, and handcuffed during the hours-long flight; the longest of these flights was a 40-hour flight to India.

        • At least 350 people, including asylum-seekers from Iran, Afghanistan, China, and African countries were deported to Panama without being given a chance to claim asylum

    • Impose an asylum ban by shutting down the CBP One app, the pathway for asylum-seekers to make an appointment to exercise their internationally protected right to asylum at the eight ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border

        • Roughly 30,000 appointments were abruptly cancelled at noon on January 20, 2025

            • ACLU filed a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order reviving a previous challenge to the rule denying asylum for people who fail to enter the U.S. through limited pathways including the use of CBP One, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center et al v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security

    • Expand the declaration that “an invasion is ongoing at the southern border”and bar all migrants from entering the U.S. Litigation challenging the legality of the proclamation is pending in the federal court of D.C.

    • Restore Migrant Protection Protocols , commonly known as Remain in Mexico, requiring migrants to wait for their asylum hearing in Mexico

    • Suspend refugee resettlement for 90 days causing flight cancellation at the last minute for hundreds who have completed the lengthy vetting process and approved to resettle in the U.S.

KICK EVERYONE OUT

    • Mobilize federal, military, state, and local law enforcement agencies to identify, arrest, detain and remove immigrants who are already in the United States by issuing multiple directives and proclamations:

        • Instruct other federal law enforcement agencies to collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on immigration enforcement

        • Expand 287(g) agreements to increase collaboration among state and local governments to collaborate on immigration enforcement by setting up Federal Homeland Security Task Forces in all states

        • Direct the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security to transfer to Guantanamo Naval Base the migrants who are considered high-risk. Since February 4, 2025, 178 Venezuelans were deported to Guantanamo; all, except one, had been deported to Venezuela on February 20, 2025, at least one third of those deported had no criminal records. Despite a restraining order issued by a federal judge on February 9, 2025, enjoining the deportation of three named plaintiffs from New Mexico to Guantanamo, the government deported them the following day. A lawsuit is pending with the federal district court in D.C. challenging the deportation of migrants to Guantanamo Bay denying migrants’ access to counsel, among other right deprivations.

    • Put more immigrants into the deportation machine through the following means:

        • Make more people lose immigration protections:

            • End and revoke categorial parole programs such as the CHNV parole program that had allowed more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to safely enter the U.S. for two years with the help of U.S.-based sponsors

            • End Temporary Protected Status for many Venezuelans and shorten that for Haitians. Litigation on the cancelation of renewal of Venezuelan TPS is pending in district courts in California and Maryland.

        • Expand mandatory detention

        • Expand expedited removal to cover noncitizens located anywhere in the U.S. who cannot prove that they have been in the U.S. for longer than two years from the past practice of only covering noncitizens who arrived in the U.S. within the past 14 days and within 100 miles of the land border. Litigation challenging the Executive Order is pending in the federal court in D.C.

        • Criminalizing civil immigration violations

        • Require undocumented immigrants to register, and make the failure to register a civil and criminal enforcement priority

    • Target particularly vulnerable populations such as unaccompanied children:

        • Prolong detention to facilitate removal of unaccompanied children, making it more difficult for the children to reunify with parents and family members by requiring fingerprints from all adult household members of the custodians as well as stringent requirement of identification documents from custodians.

        • Direct ICE to track down migrant children with outstanding removal orders for deportation.

    • Encourage self-deportation through voluntary departure and a multimillion-dollar national and international advertisement campaign.

    • Escalate the campaign of fear by rescinding the sensitive locations memorandum that limits immigration enforcement at schools, hospitals, places of worship, courthouses, places where children play, weddings and funerals to blanket the immigrant community with fear.

TANGLING THE HELPERS BY DECIMATING LEGAL SERVICES AND IMMIGRANT-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

  • Trigger federal funding freeze by directing the federal agencies to pause funding pending the review and audit of grants and agreements funding non-governmental agencies serving immigrants, direct federal agencies to terminate grant agreements and initiate claw backs
    • Across the board funding freeze ordered by the Office of Management and Budget on January 27, 2025 interrupting vital healthcare services, financial aid for students, food programs for low-income students as well as a wide swath of services for immigrants including the following:
      • “Stop Work” orders issued on January 22, 2025 calling for the immediate suspension of Immigration Court Help Desk, Legal Orientation Program for detained adults, and Counsel for Children Initiative, and a subsequent stop work order issued on February 18, 2025 issued by the Department of the Interior that immediately suspended legal services for unaccompanied children. Although these stop work orders were rescinded within days of their issuance, they caused tremendous chaos and panic among immigration legal services programs in the Houston area, dozens of staff were on the verge of being laid off or furloughed.
      • Suspension of refugee resettlement services for the refugees already resettled in the U.S. meaning many among the estimated 3,500 individuals resettled in the Houston area since July 2024 will have no money to afford food or a roof above their heads and lose access to vocational training programs that put them on paths of self-sufficiency. With hundreds of staff laid off from refugee resettlement agencies, the suspension of service also decimated the infrastructure that has taken years to rebuild.

An old and rusty stop sign in a wooded area, surrounded by lush trees.

  • Funding freeze, cancellation, or revocation of grant agreements, stop work orders, suspension of service and the threats of investigation and retribution have served to decimate immigrant-serving ecosystem causing massive staff layoff and furloughs, leaving immigrants, refugees, and migrants with no resources or assistance at a time when they are under severe attack by this administration.

LAST STRAW – STRIP BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

To close any possibility for undocumented parents to obtain lawful permanent residency through their U.S.-born children, another  executive order would strip birthright citizenship of children whose mother does not have permanent immigration status and whose father is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident. This executive order upends a 127-year legal precedent that affirms the principle that children born on the U.S. soil are U.S. citizens regardless of the immigration status of their parents. This executive order led to nine lawsuits filed in federal courts in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, California, and Washington that resulted in five nationwide injunctions.

WE ACT TO STRENGTHEN THE SAFETY NET THAT PROTECTS OUR COMMUNITY

Despite the rhetoric of mass deportation to justify expansive deployment of troops and personnel, the reality on the ground along the southern border does not match the administration’s narratives. The border has in recent weeks seen the lowest migrant crossings in decades: about one migrant encounter per 100 soldiers or agents deployed there. Shelters and services set up to assist arriving migrants are repurposing their facility and staff. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of mass deportation trumpeted by the administration has created fear in the immigrant community, causing parents to disenroll their children from school, people holed up in homes missing work and losing pay. These dangerous narratives have caused severe harm in the community.  

To protect the immigrant community, HILSC has redoubled our efforts to shore up the safety net and support infrastructure in our community through robust “Know Your Rights” training to equip immigrant-serving nonprofit organizations, educators, and religious leaders in implementing policies to protect their staff, students, parents, clients, and congregation should immigration enforcement come to their respective premises. We have also provided numerous “Know Your Rights” workshops for parents and distributed hundreds of “Know Your Rights” red cards to community members that inform their rights and show to ICE officers during encounters. We believe in the promise of the Constitution that guarantees equal protection and due process of law for everyone. We work to protect the rule of law to build a country where everyone belongs.  

 We will continue to use the HILSC website to disseminate “Know Your Rights” information and share updates of immigration policies and actions in the coming weeks and years. Amidst a time when crucial legal services and social services are being weakened, we recognize our responsibility to inform and strengthen the community. Whether through direct community outreach, our hotline, our website, or social media, we reaffirm our commitment to be an information hub for the community. 

References for this article can be found here.

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