Eight years of expanding immigration enforcement

From the first travel ban in 2017 to a peacetime invocation of the Alien Enemies Act in 2025, Republican administrations have steadily expanded who can be detained, deported, or barred at the border, and cut the legal protections standing in the way.

The pattern was set early. Days into the first Trump administration, executive orders barred most nationals of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States; the Supreme Court upheld a narrowed version 5 to 4 in 2018. In 2018, a Justice Department memo directing prosecutors to criminally charge every illegal-entry case at the southern border led to the separation of more than 5,000 children from their parents; some families were never reunited. In 2019, the "Remain in Mexico" program forced asylum seekers to wait in dangerous border cities for months or years while their cases proceeded, and a 2019 "public charge" rule discouraged lawfully present immigrants from using Medicaid or SNAP for fear it would cost them a green card.

The second term restored and expanded all of it within months. A new travel ban covering nationals of roughly 38 countries took effect through 2025 and 2026. A proclamation suspended asylum processing at the southern border entirely, ruled unlawful by a federal court and then affirmed on appeal. The Laken Riley Act made detention mandatory for a broad category of noncitizens accused of theft-related and violent offenses, with DHS reporting 17,500 detentions under it within a year. The 2025 budget law added roughly $170 billion for detention, border barriers, and ICE operations, one of the largest single expansions of immigration enforcement funding in U.S. history.

Protected status stopped being protective. DHS moved to terminate Temporary Protected Status for roughly 600,000 Venezuelans and about 353,000 Haitians, and to revoke parole for 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who had entered legally with U.S. sponsors. Lower courts blocked or delayed each move; the Supreme Court allowed most of them to proceed while litigation continues, leaving hundreds of thousands of people who had legal status suddenly without it.

In March 2025, the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime authority never before used in peacetime, to fly roughly 238 Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador without hearings. The Supreme Court later required notice and a chance at habeas review before further removals under the act. States have joined in: Florida now requires all local police to assist ICE, and Texas created its own state crime for illegal entry, enforceable again after a federal appeals court lifted an injunction that had blocked it for two years.