Trump backers are working to clear red tape for immigration crackdown

Donald Trump’s associates are making plans to deport asylum seekers as they try to figure out how to clear barriers to take severe actions to limit immigration during a potential second term.

Backers of the former president, including former administration officials, are prepping executive orders and policy memos to reduce the number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border on day one of a second term for Mr Trump, several people involved told The Wall Street Journal. 

Mr Trump himself has said he’s preparing to implement the largest mass deportation in the history of the US. The measures include speeding up asylum hearings to fast-track deportations, removing protections put in place by the Biden administration covering hundreds of thousands of migrants, and pushing other countries to take back their citizens.

Drawing inspiration from a deal the UK struck with Rwanda to send their migrants there to seek asylum, Trump allies want to revive a 2020 deal with Guatemala which saw about 1,000 migrants from El Salvador and Honduras sent there to seek asylum.

The UK-Rwanda deal has yet to go into effect because of legal challenges and a former Trump administration official acknowledged the “significant” logistical barriers when speaking to The Journal.

Restricting Immigration has been one of Mr Trump’s main talking points since the launch of his 2016 campaign. This year, he urged Republicans to stop a bipartisan immigration deal, unwilling to hand President Joe Biden a possible win on the issue.

“The American people want solutions on the border, Donald Trump only wants chaos,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told The Independent in a statement. “He proudly killed the strongest bipartisan border bill in a generation – siding with fentanyl traffickers over the border patrol and the American people.”

“The American people will once again reject Trump’s attacks on immigrants and his second term agenda of family separation 2.0 pledging to go further by using the military and law enforcement to enact his cruel, anti-American, and ineffective immigration policies,” he added.

Meanwhile, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told The Independent that “Biden’s reversal of President Trump’s immigration policies has created an unprecedented and illegal immigration, humanitarian and national security crisis on our southern border”.

“Americans can expect that immediately upon President Trump’s return to the Oval Office, he will restore all of his prior policies, implement brand new crackdowns that will send shockwaves to all the world’s criminal smugglers, and marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation in American history,” she added.

“As President Trump has said, the millions of illegals Biden has resettled across America should not get comfortable because very soon they will be going home.”

A second Trump administration would have to get around the fact that the migrants who have entered the US during the Biden administration cannot be deported under the law. And for those that can be deported, many of their home countries won’t accept them. But the Trump loyalists are preparing executive actions that would address those issues without needing Congress to act.

The immigration policies of a possible Trump White House are being discussed within the campaign, including with Mr Trump, as well as within a number of conservative groups, such as the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Heritage leads Project 2025, a planning effort by dozens of conservative groups to plan for what a right-wing administration would look like.

But Trump advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita told The Journal that “despite our being crystal clear, some ‘allies’ haven’t gotten the hint, and the media, in their anti-Trump zeal, has been all-too-willing to continue using anonymous sourcing and speculation about a second Trump administration in an effort to prevent a second Trump administration”.

“Unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official,” they added.

Some outside group officials have said that they hope to avoid what happened after Mr Trump won in 2016 when he fired the head of his transition team, former New Jersey Governor and now-Trump critic Chris Christie, and got rid of his team’s plans.

Mr Trump has said that he plans on acting like a dictator on day one of his second term to close the border and boost oil drilling.

A number of people close to Mr Trump told The Journal that the plans are partly based on Mr Biden’s first day in office in January 2021 when he used executive actions to roll back large parts of Trump administration policy.

Mr Trump has recently said that he’s set to go after as many as 20 million people in his deportation scheme, with his allies now looking at possibly using military bases to expand the number of migrants who can be detained.

Advisers are also making plans to order governors in red states to deploy the National Guard as immigration officers. Billions of dollars would probably be needed, either approved by Congress or redirected from the Department of Defense.