Washington, DC – Immigrant rights groups have said they are digging in their heels and preparing for a protracted fight as the blueprint for United States President Donald Trump’s vast immigration crackdown takes shape.
In a series of rapid-fire orders during his first week in office, Trump has sought to overhaul nearly every aspect of US immigration.
He rescinded guidance limiting where immigration raids can take place, cancelled asylum claims at the southern border and grounded refugees already approved for entry into the US, as part of a wider suspension of the US refugee programme.
Though widespread arrests have yet to materialise, immigration rights advocates on Friday said Trump has already caused mayhem for those seeking refuge in the US and sent a chill among immigrant communities already in the country.
“Costly, cruel and chaotic are the words that characterise the wave of extreme policies that the Trump administration has unleashed in its efforts to purge immigrants from our country,” Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of the advocacy group America’s Voice, said during a call with reporters.
“The chaos and fear is the point.”
‘Unprecedented powers’
After a campaign defined by dehumanising rhetoric about migrants and asylum seekers, Trump took his second oath of office on Monday, pledging immediate changes to the US immigration system.
His administration has already issued over a dozen executive orders and policy changes establishing hardline policies.
On Friday’s call with reporters, Nayna Gupta, the policy director for the American Immigration Council, said Trump’s actions reveal ambitions beyond his stated desire to arrest immigrants with criminal records.
“What Trump’s orders make clear is that they are outlining immediate actions to hurt all immigrants: the 13 million undocumented people with years of life in the US, people with lawful protections, asylum seekers, those with non-immigrant visas already in our country, and those seeking to immigrate here legally,” she said.
She said many of the administration’s early actions “invoke unprecedented powers”. Several have already been challenged in court, with more legal action expected.
The policy changes have been vast.
For undocumented immigrants already in the US, Trump is poised to increase deportations through expedited removals and increased cooperation with local law enforcement.
His Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also removed a decade-old policy prohibiting immigration arrests at “sensitive” locations including schools, hospitals and churches. His Department of Justice, meanwhile, has ordered federal prosecutors to investigate local officials who obstruct immigration enforcement.
On Friday, US media reported Trump’s DHS has also given its agents power to remove individuals legally admitted into the country under former President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole programme. Nationals from four countries — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — would be affected.
Meanwhile, those seeking safety at the US’s southern border face new obstacles under Trump.
As one of his first moves in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the border and deployed troops there. The president also suspended asylum processing and cancelled the Customs and Border Protection agency’s CBP One app, used to schedule asylum appointments.
An estimated 270,000 individuals who had used CBP One saw their meetings annulled this week, despite waiting for weeks, if not months, for their appointments in Mexico.
Trump’s administration has also grounded refugees who have undergone lengthy security vetting and pre-approval for relocation, ahead of a 90-day suspension of the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), set to begin on Monday.
‘Utter propaganda’
While Trump had undertaken similar efforts during his first term from 2017, Gupta of the American Immigration Council said the first days of Trump’s second term have revealed an “even more premeditated and thought-out blueprint for how to upend the US immigration system”.
Gupta added that Trump and his advisers “clearly have an understanding of where there are openings” in current US law to test the limits of the issue.
Many community advocates say they are bracing for the “mass deportation” campaign Trump officials have promised in media interviews in the coming days.
One raid in Newark, New Jersey, has already attracted nationwide attention. On Friday, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had entered a local business without a warrant one day prior.
He accused them of detaining both undocumented individuals and US citizens and called the incident an “egregious act” in “plain violation” of the US Constitution.
“I was appalled, upset, angry that this would happen here in this state, in this country,” Baraka said.
The raid appears to be a departure from the policies of the Biden administration, which had placed a moratorium on workplace immigration enforcement.
In its last official update on Thursday, ICE said it had made 538 arrests during the first four days of the Trump administration. The agency averaged about 310 arrests a day in 2024 under the Biden administration.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt also posted on social media that “deportation flights have begun”, with photos showing a line of people boarding a military aircraft.
Critics, however, noted that deportation flights were weekly occurrences under the Biden administration, with the only change under Trump being the use of military planes.
In a response on the social media platform X, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called the post “utter propaganda”. Another immigration activist, Thomas Cartwright, called it “theater of the absurd”.
Prolonged fight
While advocates continue to monitor how Trump’s early orders will be carried out, the battle over their legality has already begun in the courts.
An early victory came on Thursday, when a federal judge deemed Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, blocking its implementation.
Legal challenges have also been filed against Trump’s move to expand expedited removals and his cancellation of appointments scheduled via the CBP One app.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Karen Tumlin, the director of the Justice Action Center, predicted further challenges in the days ahead.
She explained that Trump’s military deployment to the southern border, the policy change on “sensitive” locations, and his order to end so-called “humanitarian parole” programmes could all face legal complaints.
But Tumlin added that lawsuits are not a silver bullet in reforming the US’s approach to immigration.
“The most important point for everyone to remember is this: The courts are a critical vehicle to stop the damage, but we really need to listen to those being harmed if we’re going to change how we operate,” Tumlin said.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Laurie Ball Cooper, the vice president for US legal programmes at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), also pointed to flaws in Trump’s suspension of the refugee programme USRAP.
The order cites national security concerns as part of its rationale for cancelling refugee flights, despite the often years-long vetting for those in the programme.
It also “relies in part on an assumption that communities in the United States are not willing or prepared to welcome refugees”, she said. “I don’t think that’s consistent with facts on the ground.”
She added IRAP is preparing litigation to challenge the suspension.
