Exposing Project 2025’s Day One Plans to Target Immigrants, Expand Executive Power
Despite the majority of Americans supporting a pathway to citizenship, an orderly and functional asylum system, and a welcoming approach to immigration, Project 2025 lays out a plan to aggressively expand executive power and shred America’s immigration system. Project 2025 would cut off asylum at the border, slash access to legal immigration pathways, use local resources to carry out mass deportations and mass detention, and hurt immigrant kids and families. It is a dark, cruel vision for America, targeted at immigrants and affecting all of us.
Here’s what you need to know about Project 2025’s extreme and deeply unpopular Day One plans to attack our immigrant neighbors, friends, and family members—plans that a far-right president would implement through executive action and federal agencies alone.
Project 2025 Harms Asylum Seekers and Children at the Border
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The Trump administration spent four years trying everything they could think of – much of it illegal – to deny people fleeing persecution access to the U.S. asylum system. Project 2025 would reinstate those policies, including “Remain in Mexico” and various regulatory bars to asylum (pp. 145, 151), leaving thousands of migrants stranded at the U.S.-Mexico border, vulnerable to abuse, kidnapping, rape, and extortion. Project 2025 purports to give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary full, unfettered discretion to suspend all immigration laws when they alone decide there is a “mass migration event” – discretion which could easily be abused (p. 152). U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) horseback-mounted patrols, notorious for abusing Haitian migrants on the banks of the Rio Grande, would be revived (p. 139).
Project 2025 Cancels Immigrants’ Legal Status to Facilitate Deportations
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Millions of immigrants in the U.S. have various types of immigration status that Project 2025 would revoke, cancel, or eliminate, making them all deportable. Project 2025 advocates ending visa programs for victims of trafficking (T visas) and for victims of crime who assist law enforcement (U visas) (pp. 141, 150). This right-wing agenda would also cancel Temporary Protected Status for over 800,000 people whose home countries are currently unsafe to return to (p. 150).
Project 2025 Uses Local Resources to Carry Out Harmful Mass Deportations and Detention
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DHS – despite having the nation’s largest law enforcement budget – does not have sufficient resources to deport the “millions” of immigrants the far right has targeted. Project 2025 requires local law enforcement agencies to hold migrants for DHS or lose their federal funding (p. 137). It also mandates “total information-sharing,” giving the federal government access to state databases (p. 138). Project 2025 encourages more use of the 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to engage in immigration law enforcement – destroying productive relationships with the community in the process (pp. 141, 153). By expanding expedited removal (p. 142) and detention (pp. 140-41, 151) and authorizing tent camps (pp. 140, 151), Project 2025 would carry out a harmful mass deportation campaign that would violate immigrants’ rights and upend daily life across this country.
Project 2025 Hurts Immigrant Kids and Families
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The Project 2025 immigration agenda is particularly cruel to immigrant children and families, including mixed-status families where some people have citizenship or immigration status and some do not. Project 2025 advocates for ending the Flores settlement agreement in order to detain children in jail-like conditions (p. 148). Mixed-status families would be barred from federally subsidized housing (p. 167). College students who are not citizens or green card holders would not be awarded student loans – and Project 2025 would bar all students from loans if they attend a school that offers in-state tuition to undocumented students (p. 167). Over the long term, Project 2025 would reject our country’s historic commitment to family unity in the immigration system, favoring instead the small “nuclear” family and highly-educated immigrants from rich countries over broad family reunification (p. 145).
Project 2025’s immigration agenda also doubles down on its overall attack on civil servants and the separation of powers to consolidate authority in the Executive branch. For example, the DHS chapter advocates for placing ideologues in high-ranking “Acting” positions throughout the agency from Day One, without the required hearings and approval by the Senate, in order to push a far-right agenda without Congressional involvement (p. 136).
In addition to Project 2025, it is clear that there are additional plans for a future far-right administration to target and harm immigrants, including invoking the Insurrection Act to use the military for immigration enforcement, deporting people 14 years old and above without due process under the Alien Enemies Act, and reinstating the Muslim Ban. There is also significant concern that an anti-immigrant administration would deploy Customs and Border Protection roving patrols and set up checkpoints within 100 miles of the border – essentially using CBP as the Executive branch’s personal anti-immigrant police force in most major U.S. cities and urban areas.
Read our full report on Project 2025 here, including additional research on how extremists intend to take over the federal government and attack immigrants to expand executive power and carry out a white supremacist agenda.
To speak with us about this report or how our team of legal experts will challenge the people and organizations behind Project 2025, email dgrahamcaso@democracyforward.org.