Originally Published by Human Rights Watch
The Trump administration has enacted new immigration policies at a dizzying pace, some of which obliterate programs built over decades to enable avenues to safety for people fleeing war and persecution.
The impact of these policies is felt directly by the asylum seekers, migrants, refugees, their families and communities. But the impact will also be far-reaching as the US sets an example that is likely to cause other countries to turn their backs on people fleeing for their lives.
1. Declaring an “Invasion” of “Aliens,” Sealing the Border, and Barring Asylum on US Territory
The foundational executive order is a proclamation that there is an invasion of the United States by “millions of illegal aliens.” Another order specific to the US southern border “suspend[s] the physical entry of any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border.” That order explicitly excludes people’s right to seek asylum if it would permit their continued presence in the United States. This order also suspends entry for anyone posing a public health risk, without specifying what that risk might be. This order also mandates construction of a wall on the southwestern border.
2. Mandatory Detention
Another order calls for “detaining, to the maximum extent authorized by law, aliens apprehended on suspicion of violating Federal or State law, until such time as they are removed from the United States.” US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) started an Alternatives to Detention Program (ATDP) in 2004, which has operated as a cost-effective non-custodial means of supervision. One of its subprograms, the Family Case Management Program, had a compliance rate of 99 percent with ICE check-ins and court hearings before the first Trump administration terminated it in 2016.
Ramped-up detention may yield windfall profits for contractors, including private prisons.
Mandatory detention is extremely regressive. In fact, the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2018, says that migration detention should be used “only as a last resort” and that countries should “work towards alternatives.”
3. Expansively Deputizing State and Local Police
Another order calls for expanding the use of state and local police “to the maximum extent permitted by law…to perform the functions of immigration officers in relation to the investigation, apprehension, or detention of aliens in the United States.” At the same time, it cuts off federal funding to “sanctuary” jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement. DHS has also rescinded a Biden-era policy barring immigration agents from raiding churches, mosques, schools, and hospitals.
4. Using the US Armed Forces to Deport, Detain, and “Seal the Border”
An order deploys the US armed forces “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration.” The US naval base at Guantánamo, Cuba is now being used to detain migrants and US military flights are being used to deport migrants.
As US armed forces deploy to the US southwestern border, their terms of engagement specify that “use of force policies prioritize the safety and security of Department of Homeland Security personnel and of members of the Armed Forces.” This all but invites US Border Patrol and military personnel to draw their weapons, especially in light of the president’s simultaneous announcement that “America’s sovereignty is under attack.”
5. Nationwide Expansion of Expedited Removal
As of January 21, expedited removal was expanded to include noncitizens apprehended anywhere in the United States who cannot prove they have been in the United States continuously for two years before the arrest. Expedited removal was originally used to allow low-level immigration officers to summarily remove newly arriving, improperly documented people without a hearing before an immigration judge, but over time the time of arrival and distance from the border have expanded.
On January 23, the acting DHS secretary issued a memo directing immigration enforcement officers to “(1) consider expedited removal for persons who meet the requirement for it but who may be in regular deportation proceedings and (2) reviewing the parole status of beneficiaries in parole programs that have been terminated and consider whether they should be placed into expedited removal proceedings or the regular deportation process.”
This broad expansion strips immigrants who may have been living in the interior of the United States of multiple due process rights that historically and legally have progressively accrued the longer a person stays in the United States and the farther they are from the border.
6. Rolling Back Parole, Temporary Protected Status, and Safe Mobility Programs.
Parole has successfully reduced the number of irregular border crossings by allowing safe and legal entry to people vetted and sponsored in response to recent refugee emergencies, such as the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Between December 2023 and August 2024, Border Patrol encounters with border-crossers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela—the four nationalities eligible for parole—dropped by 99, 98, 97, and 96 percent, respectively.
But an executive order terminates the parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. DHS will now seek to put people who were paroled into the US within the past two years into expedited removal.
The administration has also canceled the extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 300,000 Venezuelans, putting them at risk of being returned to the same dangerous conditions they fled.
An order on TPS, which says it should be “limited in scope and made for only so long as may be necessary,” suggests that renewal of TPS for the other qualifying nationals of Cameroon, Somalia, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nepal, Syria, Yemen; El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua; and Ukraine is uncertain.
Trump also ordered cessation of use of the “CBP One” application as a method for orderly scheduling appointments at ports of entry along the southwestern border and closed down “safe mobility offices” in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala that had been used for orderly processing of protection claims.
7. Indefinite Suspension of All Refugee Resettlement (Except Afrikaners)
One executive order proclaims that admitting refugees is “detrimental” to US national interests. It halts indefinitely the US refugee admissions program, which has been operating since the Vietnam War era to rescue refugees like Afghan and Iraqi interpreters who served with US armed forces and had to flee their countries as a consequence, along with refugees fleeing emergencies in Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia, and Myanmar, to name a few. In the last year of the Biden administration (FY 24) the US admitted 100,000 refugees.
President Trump later issued an order to make one exception: for white Afrikaners from South Africa.
8. Externalization of Border Controls and Migration Management
An order calls for resuming the Remain in Mexico program (Migration Protection Protocols) from the first Trump administration “as soon as practicable.” This policy was used to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims were processed in the United States. Many were preyed upon there.
The order calls for “additional international cooperation and agreements,” citing the “safe third country” provision in US law, which the first Trump administration used to conclude agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to deport to any of these three countries nationals from the other two. The US is now deporting and transporting nationals of Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan to Costa Rica and to Darién, Panama for their onward deportation, paid for by the US government.
9. Ending Birthright Citizenship for Children of Undocumented Parents
An order purports to end birthright citizenship for any child born in the United States unless one parent is a US citizen or permanent resident. The orderis being challenged as unconstitutional. These children would spend the rest of their lives fearing being deported from the country of their birth and would not receive federal identity documents, which would most likely create daunting problems in accessing essential health care, nutrition programs, and school enrollment. Some children would become de facto stateless.
10. Suspension of Development Aid and Humanitarian Assistance Worldwide
The US has long been the world leader in humanitarian assistance and refugee resettlement. This has strengthened its capacity to encourage other countries to increase their support for refugees and displaced people, to promote respect for refugee rights principles in global forums, and to maintain first asylum when countries on the frontline of refugee emergencies have struggled to host refugees or wavered in upholding their obligation not to force refugees back to countries where they would be in danger.
The US is now ending or drastically cutting financial and political support for multilateral institutions that protect refugees, including UNRWA and the World Health Organization. An order suspending humanitarian and development aid administered by the US State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for 90 days immediately threatened the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions of people worldwide. Even after the State Department issued a waiver on January 28 for some “life-saving humanitarian assistance,” many aid programs that appeared to be life-saving remained frozen.
Bill Frelick is the Director of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division of Human Rights Watch
This article is republished under a creative commons license. The original article can be found at https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/02/20/ten-harmful-trump-administration-immigration-and-refugee-policies
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