“Kevin Yang, a 46-year-old undocumented immigrant from China, said he once felt a sense of indebtedness toward the United States. But now, with President-elect Donald Trump’s second term on the horizon, he feels worried and on edge.
“The gratitude I once felt toward the U.S for accepting me into the country … has now shifted to anxiety and fear, Yang said. “And I know others in my situation feel the same.”
With the incoming Trump administration looking to prioritize deporting Chinese nationals, citing national security concerns, many undocumented Chinese men say they couldn’t feel further afield from the reasoning behind the potential policy — that Trump thinks they’re assembling an army within the United States.”
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“having fled their homeland because of political persecution, or uprooted their lives for better economic opportunities, many undocumented Chinese men reject the notion of being a threat to the United States as absurd.”
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“While Asian immigrants have long been the fastest-growing undocumented population, the number of Chinese nationals crossing into the United States in particular has skyrocketed in recent years. Between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, the number of undocumented Chinese nationals crossing both the northern and southern borders has tripled, from just over 27,000 to more than 78,000.
Experts and undocumented immigrants have said that China’s economic downturn and political friction, which came to a head during the country’s prolonged Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, were largely the basis of the migration wave. But Trump has repeatedly suggested that “military-age” men are conspiring to build an army.”
“During Trump’s first term, sanctuary cities refused to allow local law enforcement to share information with federal immigration agents or hand over immigrants in their custody. This time around, many are planning to do the same, even if doing so draws them into a fight with the second Trump administration.
Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a named contributor to its Project 2025 manifesto, has indicated the incoming administration plans to make sanctuary jurisdictions targets for “mass deportations.” Homan said recently he hopes that local law enforcement will cooperate with requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hand over undocumented immigrants already in their custody, especially when they pose a public safety threat.
“What mayor or governor doesn’t want public safety threats out of their communities?” he told the Center Square. “Their No. 1 responsibility is to protect their communities. That’s exactly what we are going to do.”
Most Democratic leaders, however, have made it clear that they will not accept federal government overreach on deportations and that they are preparing to challenge Trump’s immigration policies in court.
“We’re not looking for a fight from the Trump administration, but if he attacks our progress, we’ll fight back,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Vox. “Immigrants are such a critical part of who we are … who we will be.””
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“In his first term, Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary jurisdictions took two forms: attempting to withhold federal funding from them and challenging their policies in court.”
“Federal agencies created in times of crisis are rarely well thought out, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is no exception. ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, was created in 2002 in reaction to the previous year’s September 11 attacks. The federal body tasked with handling all things national security was empowered, via ICE, to target and deport the country’s largely peaceful population of undocumented immigrants—and ICE has operated as if those missions are two sides of the same coin.
ICE has several subagencies, but its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) component is both the largest and what most people think of when they hear ICE. Its mission is to find, arrest, and remove undocumented immigrants. In practice, that results in agents invading the personal and professional lives of migrants who have called the country home for years, are parents to U.S. citizens, and have contributed economically and socially to their communities, tearing all that apart over a long-ago border crossing or visa overstay. It is a militaristic mission that effectively turns nonviolent immigrants into fugitives.
Presidents may set different guidelines for ICE’s enforcement wing. Some presidents have prioritized the removal of violent offenders and people deemed national security threats, deprioritizing those without criminal records or with only minor charges. But President Donald Trump broadened ICE’s enforcement mandate significantly, essentially making all undocumented immigrants targets for removal.
Under those terms, ICE carried out controversial (and mind-boggling) enforcement activities against migrants who couldn’t possibly pose a risk equal to the force used against them. There are countless such stories: An undocumented man driving without his license was bringing his pregnant wife to a scheduled cesarean section when ICE took him into custody; ICE fought to send Iraqi Christians back to a homeland where they feared persecution; it deported the caretaker of a 6-year-old paraplegic boy. Far from just targeting undocumented immigrants, ICE has swept up people of all immigration and residency statuses—from arresting a longtime legal permanent resident who was tending his lawn to mistakenly deporting dozens of U.S. citizens. Those stories may ebb and flow from administration to administration, but the potential for abusive enforcement is always there.
ICE has routinely shown itself to be an overreaching and unaccountable agency. Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology found that ICE has scanned the driver’s license photos of one in three American adults and could access the driver’s license data of three in four American adults. The agency boasts a “long history of impersonating police officers, abusing immigrants in ICE detention, [and] building a vast surveillance network of data purchased from brokers and other legally questionable means,” reported Electronic Privacy Information Center Counsel Jake Wiener.
ICE’s budget has steadily increased since the agency’s creation in 2003, from $3.7 billion ($6.4 billion in current dollars) to $9.1 billion in FY 2024. The ERO’s work force has nearly tripled in the same time period, reaching 7,711 in FY 2024. It’s worth asking tough questions about the return on investment, but few politicians are willing to do so because they largely view ICE as an indispensable tool.
Many of the issues ICE purports to address would be better solved by overhauling the U.S. immigration system. The country’s undocumented immigrants are overwhelmingly a benefit, not a liability. It makes far more sense to bring them out of the shadows by providing a pathway to citizenship than to use government force to upend their lives. Reducing the incentives that drive illegal immigration, such as expanding work visa pathways and streamlining visa and green card processing, would further reduce whatever issues ICE currently thinks it must solve.
ICE is tasked with disrupting American communities and families at great cost and little benefit to taxpayers. Some important duties fall under its umbrella—there is a role for the government to play in detaining and deporting actually dangerous migrants, for one—but such things were handled before its creation, and they can be handled again by relevant law enforcement agencies. ICE’s current powers and central deportation mission are neither appropriately sized nor easily reformed. It would be much better for the government to extend an olive branch to nonviolent undocumented immigrants, reassign ICE’s useful functions elsewhere, and let the agency go once and for all.”
“According to the New York Times, Trump is planning to invoke the Insurrection Act to bring in the military to carry out mass deportations. The law is a key exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military to enforce federal law without the permission of Congress or the Constitution.
Only in rare instances have presidents invoked the Insurrection Act. President George H.W. Bush was the last one to do so amid the 1992 Los Angeles riots that broke out in response to the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King. President Dwight D. Eisenhower also notably used the Insurrection Act to facilitate the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The provision of the Insurrection Act most likely to apply in Trump’s case is one that allows the president to unilaterally activate the military domestically to enforce federal law whenever they determine that “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion… make it impracticable [to do so] by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”
Mirasola said Trump would have a “relatively easy time” making the case that cartels trafficking immigrants across the border constitute an “unlawful obstruction” to the enforcement of US immigration law. Trump has in some ways appeared to begin building his case for invoking the Insurrection Act through his rhetoric on the campaign trail this year by describing an “invasion of criminals” coming across the border.
But Mirasola said it would be harder for Trump to argue that it is impracticable to enforce immigration laws through the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” That’s because presidents have done so for decades, and border crossings are no longer unusually high: They have sharply declined this year and are down even from certain points in the first Trump administration.
However, the law gives the president “sole discretion, in most instances” to determine whether the criteria necessary to activate the military have been met, according to 2022 congressional testimony given by Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Joseph Nunn, the Center’s counsel in the national security program.
Goitein and Nunn also argued that the “vague and broad criteria for invoking the Act, combined with the lack of any provision for judicial or congressional review, render it ripe for abuse.” At that point, their concern was that Trump could have used the Insurrection Act to interfere with the certification of the 2020 election results. The use case is now different, but the potential for overreach is the same.
That is to say, while advocates may challenge Trump on whether the two key criteria for invoking the law have been met, the law gives presidents a wide berth — and the courts little power.
“For all practical purposes, courts have been cut out of the process,” Goitein and Nunn write.”
“Unauthorized immigrants aren’t broadly eligible for naturalization — and have few paths to citizenship. To qualify for naturalization, someone generally has to have been a lawful permanent resident for five years, married to a US citizen and a lawful permanent resident for three years, or a member of the military.
Additionally, the US is approving citizenship applications at its swiftest pace in years, but it’s not because regulators are trying to skew the election in Democrats’ favor. The government is doing so because there was already a backlog that got worse during the pandemic, the Los Angeles Times reports. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is effectively doing catch-up.
The US naturalized 878,500 people in 2023 and is now processing applications in roughly 4.9 months – a pace that’s comparable to how quickly the government was approving applications in 2013. According to the New York Times, processing time for naturalization applications spiked during the Trump administration as the White House sought to reduce legal and unauthorized immigration.
These new citizens also aren’t guaranteed Democratic voters. Polling has indicated that naturalized citizens lean Democrat, but both parties are likely to pick up some new voters as people undergo this process. According to a survey from the National Partnership for New Americans, 54 percent of naturalized citizens said they’d vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, while 38 percent said they’d back former President Donald Trump.
It’s worth reiterating that naturalized citizens aren’t unauthorized immigrants, and that the bulk of them — roughly 83 percent, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services — have been lawful permanent residents for five years. Unauthorized immigrants have limited pathways to citizenship, and many aren’t eligible for naturalization.”
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“This Republican talking point appears to refer to a “parole” program the Biden administration has approved for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans amid instability in their home countries. Under the program, people can temporarily enter the US for two years, pay for their own travel, and fly into the country. There is no evidence that people are being flown specifically to swing states, and as a US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesperson told Vox, DHS does not choose the airports that parolees fly into, and it also doesn’t control or choose where parolees settle down.
Additionally, parolees do not have a path to citizenship and as a result would be unable to vote in future elections.
As legal immigrants, asylum seekers do have a path to citizenship; according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), 3.3 percent of those naturalized in 2023 came to the US as asylum seekers — roughly 29,000 people. While that might be enough to swing a state as close as Georgia was in 2020, it’s not enough to affect the outcomes in all the states Musk listed, even if Democrats were flying people there. Which, again, they aren’t.
In addition, most naturalized citizens have settled in states that are not swing states, with California, Texas, Florida, New York, and New Jersey topping the list, per USCIS.”
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“It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and noncitizens have very rarely been found to be illegally voting. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning nonprofit that focuses on voting rights, election officials responsible for the counting of nearly 23.5 million votes in 2016 identified just 30 possible cases of noncitizen voting for investigation.
Noncitizens are able to vote in some local elections for positions like City Council and school board in some jurisdictions in Vermont and California, but they aren’t able to vote anywhere in federal elections.”
His plans increase the deficit, which is inflationary.
Large and broad tariffs are inflationary.
A massive crackdown on illegal immigration will also be inflationary as without cheap labor, making products will be more expensive or won’t happen here at all–particularly agricultural goods and housing.
Trump wants to end the independence of the Federal Reserve. Trump has been in favor of lower interest rates, which will increase inflation.
“Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan is going to be the “border czar” in the Trump administration, President-elect Donald Trump announced on Truth Social.
Homan, a staunch Trump supporter, will be in charge of the mass deportations that have been promised by Trump throughout his 2024 campaign.
“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” Trump wrote in his post on Sunday evening.
“Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin. Congratulations to Tom. I have no doubt he will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job,” Trump added.
Homan oversaw ICE during the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” enforcement that separated parents from their children at the border.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) estimates there are anywhere from 500 to 1,000 families who have not been reunited.”
“The bill’s reforms aside, its restrictions would have made the border a much more dangerous and inaccessible place for people seeking protection. A similar border-buttoning authority during the pandemic didn’t prevent crossings, but it did lead to thousands of reported instances of kidnapping, torture, and rape suffered by asylum seekers who were returned to or stopped in Mexico. Fortifying the border against asylum seekers, as the bipartisan bill would’ve done and as President Joe Biden is now doing, keeps vulnerable migrants in danger.
Harris and Walz’s eagerness to defend the failed border bill is a sign of the Democratic Party’s rightward shift on immigration and border security this year. The legislation had no grand reform—no pathway to citizenship for undocumented longtime residents, no solution for Dreamers, no farm work visa improvements—to balance the significant asylum restrictions. But the border and immigration have increasingly become liabilities for Democrats (and top priorities for voters), so their messaging has gotten tougher and their appetite for restrictionism has grown.
Congress should work on immigration reform instead of relying on the president to patch up the broken system. As Walz said in yesterday’s debate, “You can’t just do this through the executive branch.” Questions of process aside, this year’s bipartisan bill wasn’t the silver bullet or the humane solution Democrats keep suggesting.”
“the vast majority of fentanyl brought into the U.S. is not carried by illegal immigrants or the result of porous borders: From 2019 to 2024, 80.2 percent of the people arrested at the border with fentanyl were U.S. citizens, according to David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.
And as NPR reported last year, “the vast majority of illicit fentanyl—close to 90%—is seized at official border crossings.””
“Musk’s claim that the undocumented population in swing states is surging, sourced to unspecified “government data,” appears false: Data from both Homeland Security and Pew Research Center debunks Musk’s claim of a Biden-era surge in undocumented immigrants to swing states. (In a few swing states, undocumented populations have shrunk, whereas in others, they’ve increased slightly or been stagnant.) Migrants aren’t being “put” in those states by anyone, let alone Democrats — that’s not how undocumented migration works. Nor is there any evidence Harris has a viable plan to grant them all citizenship in four years or proof they’d all vote for Democrats forever once given the franchise.
Really, what Musk is doing is taking a hoary old white nationalist trope — the “Great Replacement” mainstreamed by X’s most prominent talk show host, Tucker Carlson — and reiterating it with dubious swing-state demographic data.”