Advocates rue Trump immigration plan 'calculated to create fear'

President Trump’s barrage of executive orders on immigration and border security will test his opposition’s strength in the courts of law and public opinion, and also threatens to set boundaries on his administration’s capacity to close the country’s doors.

Litigation came virtually instantly against some parts of Trump’s plans, including a birthright citizenship order that could force all new parents to prove the legitimacy of their U.S. citizenship.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued on Monday night, pushing back against the birthright citizenship order and targeted border enforcement measures like the shutdown of the CBP One app.

“Trump's barrage of executive orders is calculated to create fear, create chaos, induce anxiety, and drive our elected officials to capitulate and collaborate in a mass deportation agenda,” said Naureen Shah, a deputy director with the ACLU.

Trump’s new immigration policies span the gamut. One places a pause on refugee admissions while another reinstates a program pairing local law enforcement with immigration agents.

Another declares a national emergency, clearing the way for greater use of active-duty military along the southern border as well as funneling resources to help build the border wall.

Another order deems migration an “invasion” and seeks to end asylum processing by deeming migrants a public health and national security threat.

The flurry of orders is similar to Trump’s efforts in 2017, when he first took office. But there is also a key difference: It’s more sophisticated, said Doris Meissner, director of the immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner.

“I mean, let's just be very pointed about it. The point person within the Trump community on this has continued to be Stephen Miller, who was pivotal in the first Trump administration, but who has stuck with this issue since, has been a critical player in the Project 2025 work,” she said.

Another difference is the breadth of the orders and whom they impact. The orders could affect the nation’s estimated 13 million immigrants without legal status as well as some immigrants with legal status.

Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship also lays bare the ways his orders stretch beyond the undocumented population he claims to be targeting.

That order also applies to anyone in the U.S. on a nonimmigrant visa — a broad class that also includes students, those on H-1B visas and others who have authorization to work in the U.S. and often remain for years.

The birthright citizenship reinterpretation could, for instance, fundamentally change the rules for new parents to register their babies and for all U.S. citizens to apply for passports.

Implementation of those sorts of rules are likely to set off court action, researchers say.

“Birth certificates are issued by local municipalities, and some local municipalities will suddenly say, ‘I will not issue your birth certificate until you show me proof of the citizenship or lawful permanent residence of your parents.’ Then if that happens, that's going to get challenged. The other option is that if someone applies for a passport, passport authority will say, ‘We will not issue you a passport unless you show us proof about the legal status of citizenship of your parents,’” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at MPI.

The new rules could also impact the behavior of prospective immigrants — a group the Trump administration wants to deter from even considering the United States as a destination despite historical evidence pointing toward the futility of deterrence as an immigration policy.

The end of CBP One as a doorway to asylum, for instance, shows a Trump administration that prioritizes less immigration over orderly immigration — the app was a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s successful effort to channel people away from sneaking across the border and toward orderly presentation at ports of entry.

“I think that this also raises important questions about the roles of the cartels and smuggling organizations. And whether we end up seeing changing patterns in people who had previously been turning themselves in [now] maybe trying to avoid detection because of this package of restrictions,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney at MPI.

Further complicating matters is Trump’s use of 212(f), a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows for suspending the entry of migrants.

Like Title 42, the statute can use public health as a guise for rejecting migrants' entry, but its a broader provision, which Trump previously used as the basis of his so-called Muslim ban.

“It does seem to be a very serious attempt to use the Title 42 authority again without even identifying what disease immigrants are being accused of bringing to this country,” Robyn Barnard of Human Rights First said of the use of 212(f).

Another order also expands military presence at the border to “repel the invasion.”

“In this executive order, Trump seems to be bypassing the Insurrection Act and going straight to the president’s inherent constitutional authority to repel foreign invasions — with enormous implications for the use of force, cross-border operations, detention authority, etc,” Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, wrote on the social platform X.

“Of course, unlawful migration is not an 'invasion' in any legal sense. The use of commander-in-chief powers to conduct military operations against migrants would be a stunning abuse of power, even by Trump’s standards. ... The notion that unlawful migration can and should be met with military force must be swiftly condemned and discredited.”

The broad scope of the new Trump orders — whether they survive court challenges or not — may be the point, according to some advocates.

“There are enormous resources already that are devoted for us as a country toward immigration enforcement. This is a significant dialing-up. Whether it really will happen or not, remains to be seen. But in the meanwhile … the messaging that surrounds it and the tone of it all may end up being as critically important as the actual numerical outcomes,” said Meissner.

“It really renames — recategorizes — immigration as a national security threat and puts into place, both at the border with a national security lens, as well as in the interior with a threat to public safety and the well-being of American communities, the wherewithal to have much more heightened enforcement and a focus on enforcement as compared with the broad themes of the immigration system, which are, in fact, to encourage legal immigration and to recognize legal immigration as a positive and as an asset for the country,” she added.

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