Mass Deportation: Analyzing the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Immigrants, Democracy, and America

Understanding this administration’s immigration policy

The first six months of the second Donald J. Trump administration have arguably seen the most significant changes to U.S. immigration policy in the nation’s history. Taken one by one, as they have been announced or revealed, the effect can be overwhelming: it seems impossible to even comprehend everything that has happened, much less to understand it in a systematic way or to anticipate what might come next.

The purpose of this report is not to recapitulate the last six months of chronology. Nor is it to contextualize the last six months within the history of immigration policy. The administration is simultaneously continuing some policy trends in place under the previous administration; taking latent powers within immigration law and using them as a matter of course; reanimating laws whose enactment predates the modern immigration system; and asserting wholly new powers that have never existed in law before.

Lists like these can make anyone feel as though they have no idea what is actually going on. We aim to do the opposite of that: to provide a framework for the American people to understand what has been done to noncitizens, the communities in which they live, and the entire U.S. immigration system since January 20, 2025. We hope this framework will remain useful as the Trump administration continues its effort to fundamentally transform the American government, character, and role in the world.

Our report is organized as a survey of the immigration policy landscape as of mid-2025, seeking to answer three key questions:

• Who are we allowing into the United States, and who are we excluding?
• How are we treating the immigrants already here?
• Who are we forcing to leave, and how?

We answer these questions both by recounting and analyzing some of the administration’s actions that have shaped the current environment, and by introducing readers to Ilia, a Russian dissident detained in the United States after winning his asylum case; Axel, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient trying to plan his career without knowing if he can keep working legally in the U.S.; Beatriz, a lawyer representing young immigrant children like she once was herself; and Kaelyn, whose partner was arrested in the middle of the night and now faces potential removal under the Alien Enemies Act. These profiles, and the stories of others referenced in the report, are a constant reminder that the decisions this administration has made and the way in which they have implemented them have enormous human costs.

On the ground, the answers to these questions are changing day by day—even minute by minute—as new policies are enacted, implementation is tweaked, or judicial injunctions and protracted litigation attempt to maintain the status quo. (One prominent example: this report does not address the Supreme Court’s ruling to partially stay lower-court injunctions of the executive order limiting birthright citizenship, as the effects and implications of that ruling are still unfolding.) The report reflects our best understanding as of its publication, and specific policies described herein may no longer be in effect, or in place in the same way.

However, precisely because policy will continue to evolve for the rest of President Trump’s second term, this report also seeks to identify cross-cutting themes that we believe are particularly important to understand what is being done, and whom it is being done to.

These themes are intended to help the public make sense of changes that can often seem too fast, too sweeping, or too complex to understand—both those that have happened in the administration’s first six months, and those that may come during the rest of President Trump’s time in office.

Source: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/mass-deportation-trump-democracy/