How Trump's Immigration Policy Is Taking Shape

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Speaker 3 Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon.
I cover politics.

Speaker 5 I'm Jimena Bustillo and I cover immigration policy.

Speaker 4 And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

Speaker 3 And today on the show, we take a look at how President Trump's immigration policies are developing so far. Jimene, you've been all over this beat.

Speaker 3 Immigration, as you know, has always been a major focus for Trump, and it was a really big focus of the 2024 campaign. What's happened so far?

Speaker 5 Well, Trump kicked off his second term by immediately signing a slew of executive actions aimed at limiting both illegal and legal migration.

Speaker 5 And this included stopping pathways to seek refugee or asylum status and bolstering the different government resources to arrest, detain, and deport people.

Speaker 5 Since, there has been a steady stream of many memos, increased agencies that have been tapped in to help, such as the military, the IRS, the Justice Department, and increased pressure on the Department of Homeland Security, which is the core agency here, to make more arrests and detentions and deportations.

Speaker 5 The administration has has also really heavily promoted every step of the way from posting on social media about

Speaker 5 work site or street arrests and some of these interagency partnerships, bringing news reporters along on raids and trainings with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Speaker 5 The numbers in terms of results are a little tricky, but on the ground,

Speaker 5 there is this feeling of pressure and concern and even support over these policies so far.

Speaker 5 Split-by-party respondents of a recent NPR Ipsos poll last month were divided on whether they supported some of the White House more dramatic moves, like attempting to end birthright citizenship and detaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay.

Speaker 3 Now, Trump said in his address to Congress last night, speaking of numbers, that his administration, quote, has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history.

Speaker 3 Is that true?

Speaker 5 Well, it's too early to know just how much he's going to be able to do over next four years. And other presidents have had large deportation priorities before.

Speaker 5 Former President Barack Obama's administration, for example, deported over 3 million people, but that is much lower than the 11 million people that Trump and his advisors have referenced.

Speaker 5 And this second administration's own efforts face a lot of the issues that they faced the first time, like logistical and capacity challenges.

Speaker 3 You know, Mara, is this a situation where the optics of taking some kind of action, whatever it is, will matter more for Trump's supporters than whether or not he actually literally delivers on all of his campaign promises for immigration?

Speaker 4 No, I think that the optics are more important. I think that that's going to matter more politically than whether he actually hits a numerical target.

Speaker 4 If he just deports people who are in the United States without legal status, I think that will continue to be popular.

Speaker 4 But if he starts taking away legal status from big groups of immigrants who are in this country, like Haitians or Venezuelans who have been protected by TPS, temporary protected status, that might be different.

Speaker 4 And remember, the reason why we have an illegal immigration problem in the United States is because we have a labor shortage in the United States.

Speaker 4 If there weren't jobs for these people, they wouldn't be coming. And Donald Trump has not addressed that part of the problem.

Speaker 3 Yeah, let's talk more about that. I mean, Jimena, based on your reporting, if Trump were successful on a large scale, what would that mean for the economy, nationally and local economies?

Speaker 5 Well, the latest estimates are from 2022 from Pew Research, and they say that about 8 million workers are not authorized to work in the U.S. and are working in the U.S.

Speaker 5 There are several sectors where these workers make up a large chunk of the population of the workforce, and a lot of these estimates are expected to be under counts.

Speaker 5 This includes construction, hospitality, hospitality, manufacturing, agriculture.

Speaker 5 And I spoke with employers and labor leaders across these sectors who have emphasized that they are often facing a labor shortage. There is a struggle to find domestic workers.

Speaker 5 And this can be tougher in rural areas where labor markets are just a lot tighter. So there's reliance on a newer workforce, on a migrant workforce, but visas as well play a role in this.

Speaker 5 And if you were to just snap your fingers and make those people disappear, it could create an economic blow.

Speaker 4 Jimena, what is the status of TPS? There are a bunch of immigrants who are here with that legal protection, and Trump has talked about ending it. Is it still in effect?

Speaker 5 So there are different programs. There's temporary protected status, and then there is also the Cuban, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans parole program.

Speaker 5 Some of those programs have already been ended, which is putting hundreds of thousands of people in a bit of a limbo status.

Speaker 5 Some of those programs are just not going to be renewed, which was a risk already, particularly when it came to TPS. TPS needed to be renewed periodically for the people with that status.

Speaker 5 And Trump has already said that he's not going to renew the TPS status of several people under that program. It's unknown what that means for those individuals.

Speaker 5 Those individuals already didn't really have a pathway to citizenship.

Speaker 5 And so, again, this is a problem that was going to exist anyways. And Trump has accelerated that.

Speaker 3 All right. We talked earlier about the optics of mass deportation, as Trump calls it.
But what about the logistics?

Speaker 3 I mean, he's expressed a desire to deport somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million people, maybe even more. Is that remotely feasible as the system currently stands?

Speaker 5 No, definitely not. And that is something that has been also confirmed by the current administration.

Speaker 5 You know, we have White House Borders, Tom Homan, being very adamant that they need money from Congress in order to expand the capacity of both the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, also known as ICE, which is one of the primary agencies that helps to arrest and deport individuals, but also just the capacity building, you know, making sure that there are enough beds, making sure that there's enough people to adjudicate any sort of claims.

Speaker 5 And in order to scale up, you just need more money from Congress.

Speaker 3 Okay, it's time for a quick break. We'll have more in a moment.

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Speaker 3 And we're back. Now, Jimena, we've talked a lot about deportation, but it's worth noting that there are some kinds of immigration that Trump does support.

Speaker 3 What are those?

Speaker 5 Well, Trump has previously voiced support for finding some sort of pathway for those with deferred action for childhood arrivals, also known as Dreamers, to get status.

Speaker 5 But he's also put a new focus on creating new programs, particularly attractive to those that can sort of buy their way to legal permanent residency.

Speaker 5 He's calling this the gold card, but we don't really know yet how he wants to create it.

Speaker 5 The ability to create a new visa or even provide pathways to status, that's something that's in the power of Congress.

Speaker 5 Also making big changes to existing visas, which this might do. Some of that can become congressional territory as well.

Speaker 3 And Mara, I mean, this isn't totally a new idea, right? But it kind of aligns with Trump's transactional view of how politics are supposed to work.

Speaker 4 Aaron Ross Powell, well, yeah, but also it aligns with his view of what he wants America to look like. The people who could afford this gold card, and as you said, it's not new.

Speaker 4 The United States has had a program for people who could come to the United States and invest a certain amount of money and create jobs.

Speaker 4 I don't know if it's been $5 million, which is the price of his gold card, but he expects that these will be wealthy people from around the world who he says can create businesses and employ Americans.

Speaker 4 It's a way to get foreigners to invest in the country. Foreign governments do this too.

Speaker 4 Many European countries used to offer a kind of gold card or an EU visa or passport to people, yes, some still do, to people who would be willing to buy an apartment for X million euros. Aaron Powell,

Speaker 3 you know, there's been an appetite going back many years now for some kind of immigration reform in Congress. There have been many efforts toward that end.

Speaker 3 A deal was in place when President Joe Biden was in office, which Trump essentially torpedoed from afar.

Speaker 3 Do either of you get the sense that any kind of major legislative reform is possible now, or is immigration policy just going to be directed through executive action?

Speaker 4 Oh, I think there's definitely a possibility for action. As a matter of fact, I've had many conversations with Republicans about this.

Speaker 4 If Trump was really smart politically and wanted to triangulate the way he did on abortion during the campaign, he would sign a comprehensive immigration bill that included a path to citizenship for the DREAMers.

Speaker 4 And he would

Speaker 4 basically

Speaker 4 get tremendous amounts of credit. He might even be able to cement some of the support he got from Hispanic voters, especially Hispanic men.
That would be a real political coup.

Speaker 4 Now, there are people in his party that don't want any kind of immigration reform that would amount to what they would call amnesty.

Speaker 4 In other words, giving people who are here without legal status some kind of legal status or a path to that. But yeah, I think it's absolutely possible.

Speaker 5 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You know, immigration has been legislated through executive action now for several presidencies, both Democrats and Republicans. So I do expect that trend to definitely continue.

Speaker 5 But to Mara's point, you know, Trump also does have control of Congress. And even if it's not major reform, it's likely that he may aim to push other priorities related to funding or visas.

Speaker 5 You know, he has already checked off a legislative win with his first law being the Lake and Riley Act, which expanded the scope of who could be deported.

Speaker 5 So he does have kind of the people and the things in place to try and facilitate this.

Speaker 5 I've also heard from folks that it is kind of interesting he hasn't put up a bill already for Congress to tackle and to take on.

Speaker 5 Obviously, up on the Hill, there are several other priorities that are, I think, at the forefront, funding being one of them. So we'll see what happens once that is handled.

Speaker 3 Jimene, you've been watching this all unfold. You've been watching Trump begin to implement some of his immigration policy in the first several weeks of his administration.

Speaker 3 What are you going to have your eyes on in the coming weeks and months?

Speaker 5 I think the coming weeks and months is kind of keeping an eye on how the Republican Party generally is trying to facilitate Trump's goals, whether it is through funding, through more resources,

Speaker 5 or, you know, how far they're willing to go and allow Trump to expand to other areas, other parts of the federal government, other public-private partnerships in order to get it done.

Speaker 5 I mean, right now, it really is on that capacity building and that kind of logistical side of what he's doing. At the same time, you know, sometimes the fear is the message.

Speaker 5 And that is something that me and my colleagues have been really noticing and reporting out as well.

Speaker 5 A lot of folks are equating some of these actions to the Obama administration, dusting off old activist strategies, dusting off old procedures in case ICE comes knocking to their workplace or to their house.

Speaker 5 And that is something on the ground that is being felt, regardless of ICE's capacity to scale up or regardless of Tom's Holman's ability to deport more people immediately.

Speaker 4 Well, Himena, what about employers? I mean, what about meat packing plants that depend on people who are here without legal status? What are they doing about this?

Speaker 4 Are they trying to appeal to ICE not to come into their plants? Or in some communities, this would be economically devastating.

Speaker 5 So I spoke to several employers across different sectors, including food processing and the agriculture sector.

Speaker 5 And they're just kind of re-upping, you know, what their their strategies are, what their rights are, should ICE or other federal agents come to their door.

Speaker 5 You know, at a certain point, there isn't a whole lot that they can do about it. The tough part for employers is, you know, they argue that it's not their responsibility to verify employment.

Speaker 5 They don't know, they don't have access to social security databases or DMV databases to verify that someone's driver's license is real or someone's social security number is real.

Speaker 5 Their job is just to keep the paperwork straight and hopefully, you know, be able to cooperate with any investigations.

Speaker 5 So that's kind of where they're at.

Speaker 3 Just one more thing I want to mention before we go. You know, Jimena, you mentioned the word fear a couple of times, and that made me think about President Trump's speech to Congress.

Speaker 3 He said, they heard my words and they chose not to come. You know, we've talked a lot about enforcement, but it seems that part of the strategy is fear, right?

Speaker 3 It's just simply to tell people who might otherwise come to this country don't.

Speaker 5 Yes, that is a part of the strategy. I mean, Christy Noam did a whole video public service announcement about how people need to leave.

Speaker 5 And, you know, this kind of additional chilling effect is something advocates were worried about and were more concerned about than even sometimes the more tangible deportation efforts that could be ongoing from federal offices.

Speaker 5 You know, I remember when I was covering some of this during the early stages of the the pandemic, and there was concern that people wouldn't seek out public benefits, such as food stamps, health care, COVID tests, vaccines, things like that, because they feared being labeled as a public charge.

Speaker 5 Meaning that when your application for asylum or legal permanent residency is being reviewed by an individual officer, if they think that the American society has been just spending too much money, you lose your ability to qualify for further status.

Speaker 3 All right, that's all from us for today. I'm Sarah McCammon.
I cover politics.

Speaker 5 I'm Jiman Abustio, and I cover immigration policy.

Speaker 4 And I'm Mara Lyasson, senior national political correspondent.

Speaker 3 And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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