In his first 100 days in workplace, United States President Donald Trump invoked archaic immigration legal guidelines, questioned judges’ energy to rule in opposition to his choices and tried to finish a number of authorized immigration pathways.
Trump started laying the groundwork for his immigration plans lengthy earlier than his January 20 inauguration.
For years, Trump and his allies have mentioned falsely or with out proof that the US is being invaded by immigrants who’re driving up crime charges and that overseas international locations are sending their prisoners and mentally sick folks to the US.
A number of Trump administration officers additionally mentioned courts can not and shouldn’t rule on Trump’s immigration actions as a result of they take care of nationwide safety and overseas coverage points. In doing so, Trump “is in search of an absence of accountability to do issues that the regulation in any other case prohibits”, mentioned Matthew Lindsay, a College of Baltimore regulation professor.
The Trump administration’s use of nationwide safety or overseas coverage as a protect in opposition to judicial overview is a stark distinction from different administrations, Lindsay mentioned.
We talked to legal professionals, historians and criminologists to look at the false narratives and spin propelling Trump’s immigration insurance policies within the first 100 days.
Trump’s case for an ‘invasion’ results in mass deportation efforts
In 2018, throughout his first time period, Trump described a caravan of hundreds of immigrants strolling in direction of the US southern border as an invasion. Lots of them had been anticipated to request asylum within the US. Constitutional regulation specialists say that what legally counts as an invasion is an armed assault by militaries or paramilitaries.
Many Gang Members and a few very unhealthy individuals are combined into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border. Please return, you’ll not be admitted into the US until you undergo the authorized course of. That is an invasion of our Nation and our Navy is ready for you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018
In the course of the 2024 presidential marketing campaign, as immigration reached historic highs throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, Trump started tying the invasion narrative to one in every of his signature coverage guarantees: Mass deportations.
“I’ll cease the migrant invasion, and we are going to start the most important deportation operation within the historical past of our nation,” he mentioned at an October rally.
Ten days later, at one other rally, he mentioned: “We is not going to be occupied. We is not going to be conquered. That’s what they’re doing. That is an invasion into our nation of a overseas army.”
So Trump upon taking workplace issued an government order declaring a nationwide emergency on the southern border. In two different directives, he described immigration as an invasion.
One of many legal guidelines he finally invoked – the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – lets the president detain and deport folks from a “hostile nation or authorities” with no listening to when the US is both at warfare with that nation or the nation has “perpetrated, tried, or threatened” an invasion in opposition to the US.
“It is a time of warfare as a result of Biden allowed thousands and thousands of individuals, a lot of them criminals, a lot of them on the highest stage,” Trump instructed reporters on March 16. “That’s an invasion. They invaded our nation.”
The Alien Enemies Act has been used solely thrice in US historical past, every throughout wartime.
In February, the State Division designated Tren de Aragua – a gang that shaped between 2013 and 2015 in a Venezuelan jail – as a overseas “terrorist” organisation.
In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport a whole bunch of Venezuelans whom he mentioned had been Tren de Aragua gang members who had “infiltrated” cities throughout the nation. They had been despatched to the Terrorism Confinement Middle, or CECOT, a maximum-security jail in El Salvador.
They had been deported with out due course of; the federal government didn’t current proof of their gang membership earlier than a choose and the migrants weren’t given the chance to defend themselves. CECOT is the most important jail in Latin America and has been decried for human rights abuses, equivalent to torture and lack of medical care.
Trump broadly portrays immigrants as criminals, however the information says in any other case
Trump has repeatedly mentioned that international locations – particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Venezuela – ship folks from prisons and psychological hospitals to the US. He has not cited proof.
“We had been elected to scrub up the mess of this nation, and we had thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of individuals are available who had been criminals, who had been murderers, who had been every thing you’ll be able to think about,” Trump mentioned on April 21. “Drug lords, drug sellers, they got here in from prisons and from psychological establishments. And I used to be elected to maneuver them out.”
The immigrant crime narrative drove his profitable presidential marketing campaign. Vice President JD Vance pointed to Haitian immigration in Springfield, Ohio, cherry-picking from restricted statistics to say immigrants raised the variety of murders. Along with focusing on Springfield, Trump mentioned Tren de Aragua took over Aurora, Colorado.
To assist its deportation efforts, the White Home mentioned Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who the US authorities mentioned it mistakenly deported to CECOT, is an MS-13 gang member. The administration has exaggerated findings from earlier judges on his case and highlighted tattoos that don’t correspond with MS-13.
Criminologists who examine potential hyperlinks between migration and crime say regardless of some high-profile crimes dedicated by immigrants, they commit crimes at decrease charges than native-born US residents.
The Marshall Undertaking discovered no hyperlink between crime and migrant arrivals from April 2022 to Could 2023 in New York, Chicago, Washington, DC and Denver, after Texas Governor Greg Abbott started busing immigrants into these cities. The Marshall Undertaking’s 2024 report checked out policing information in circumstances involving crimes equivalent to theft, murders and shootings.
A 2018 nationwide examine by College of Wisconsin and Purdue College sociologists discovered that will increase within the immigrant inhabitants within the US are related to important decreases in violence. The examine analysed violent crime from 1990 to 2014, inspecting the affiliation between modifications in undocumented migration and violent crime on the state stage in all 50 states and Washington, DC.
A Nationwide Institute of Justice examine of Texas Division of Public Security information from 2012 to 2018 confirmed undocumented immigrants are arrested at lower than half the speed of native-born US residents for violent and drug crimes. Researchers separated arrest information for crimes dedicated by undocumented immigrants from information for crimes dedicated by documented immigrants and native-born US residents.
Trump mentioned in an April 25 Time journal interview, “We’ve crime charges beneath Biden that went by the roof, and now we have to carry these charges down. And sadly, these charges have been added to by the unlawful immigrants that he allowed into the nation.”
Opposite to Trump’s assertion, FBI information reveals that violent crime dropped throughout Biden’s presidency.
“Individuals are like, ‘Crime is uncontrolled.’ Nicely, really, crime isn’t uncontrolled proper now, however the notion is that it’s uncontrolled,” mentioned Charis Kubrin, a criminology, regulation and society professor on the College of California, Irvine.
“It’s very simple to show and blame immigrants, as a result of these stereotypes have lengthy existed and since it’s form of this pure ‘in group, out group’ strategy that individuals take.”
Kubrin mentioned Trump’s deceptive claims about immigrants and crime have led to insurance policies primarily based on defective assumptions that don’t completely goal folks with legal convictions.
The New York Instances reported many of the 238 men deported to El Salvador have neither legal information within the US nor documented hyperlinks to Tren de Aragua.
Kubrin mentioned deceptive perceptions of immigrant crime can hurt immigrants.
“Different penalties embrace elevated hate and hate crimes in opposition to immigrants and in opposition to racial and ethnic minorities who might resemble immigrants, like Asians and Hispanics, however aren’t immigrants themselves,” Kubrin mentioned.
Trump officers ignore separation of powers when saying courts haven’t any authority on immigration insurance policies
Like earlier administrations, a lot of Trump’s immigration insurance policies have been challenged by lawsuits and halted with short-term restraining orders.
Trump and his officers have dismissed the constitutional division of powers among the many legislative, government and judicial authorities branches. At occasions, they’ve mentioned the courts haven’t any position to play and that judges who don’t agree with Trump must be impeached.
After a federal choose dominated the Trump administration could not deport Venezuelans beneath the Alien Enemies Act, White Home adviser Stephen Miller mentioned, “A district court docket choose has no authority to direct the nationwide safety operations of the manager department.”
Trump’s “border tsar” Tom Homan mentioned, “I don’t care what the judges suppose.”
White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the choose’s order as having “no lawful foundation”, saying “federal courts typically haven’t any jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of overseas affairs.”
Authorized specialists say federal courts have the ability to evaluation and rule on the constitutionality of the president’s immigration actions.
“There’s completely nothing about an immigration coverage that, by advantage of the truth that it’s an immigration coverage, insulates it from judicial evaluation,” Michael Gerhardt, a College of North Carolina professor of jurisprudence, mentioned.
The chief department has broad discretion over overseas coverage issues, however that doesn’t imply that circumstances that take care of overseas coverage, together with immigration circumstances, are off-limits for the courts, Mary Ellen O’Connell, College of Notre Dame regulation professor, agreed.
Rick Su, a College of North Carolina immigration regulation professor, mentioned, “The Trump administration seems to be arguing that simply because overseas affairs is concerned, the administration doesn’t must comply with the regulation in any respect, that no matter they do is the regulation, and that the courts can not train any jurisdiction over what they do.”
However courts haven’t dominated “that the regulation or judicial evaluation doesn’t apply to an immigration resolution … simply because overseas affairs is concerned”, Su mentioned.
Labelling immigrants who entered the US by way of authorized immigration packages as ‘unlawful’
The Trump administration has mentioned Biden abused his government powers when he created sure programmes that allow folks briefly enter or keep within the US legally. Vance additionally framed it this fashion in the course of the marketing campaign, falsely saying the beneficiaries of the programmes had been “unlawful immigrants” as a result of the programmes had been unlawful, in his view.
Leavitt mentioned individuals who entered the US by way of humanitarian parole programmes and finally obtained Non permanent Protected Standing “got here right here for financial causes, they usually illegally entered our nation”.
Humanitarian parole and Non permanent Protected Standing give folks short-term authorized authority to dwell and work within the US, immigration legal professionals mentioned. When these protections expire or are terminated, folks’s immigration standing reverts to what they’d earlier than these protections. Neither parole nor Non permanent Protected Standing immediately results in US citizenship.
The Trump administration has tried to finish these protections earlier than their expiration.
Kristi Noem, Trump’s homeland safety secretary, tried ending Non permanent Protected Standing for sure Venezuelans. Courts have briefly halted the termination. The division isn’t extending the programme for Afghans and Cameroonians and reduce it quick for Haitians. TPS for Haitians is now set to run out on August 3, six months earlier than the unique deadline.
The division additionally tried ending the safety of individuals with humanitarian parole beneath the programme for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. However a federal choose briefly halted the transfer on April 14.
Decide Indira Talwani mentioned the humanitarian parole programme beneficiaries complied with the obtainable immigration processes.
“As lawful parolees, they didn’t must concern arrest for being in the US, had been permitted to legally work in the event that they obtained work authorisation, and will apply for adjustment of standing or different advantages whereas paroled into this nation,” Talwani wrote. “The speedy affect of the shortening of their grant of parole is to trigger their lawful standing in the US to lapse early – in lower than two weeks.”
Maria Cristina Garcia, a Cornell College historical past professor and migration skilled, mentioned some immigration modifications are occurring “quietly on the bureaucratic stage”, such because the denial of visas, whereas others had been “introduced with nice fanfare”, such because the suspension of refugee admissions.
“I don’t suppose now we have a full understanding but of the various methods the Trump administration is altering our immigration system,” Garcia mentioned.
