Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency
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Highlights
The Trump administration took more than 400 immigration executive actions during its first term, curtailing legal and unauthorized immigration and dismantling humanitarian protections.
- Over four years, the Trump administration executed more than 400 immigration changes exclusively through executive action, bypassing Congress and reshaping enforcement, legal immigration, and humanitarian protections.
- Refugee admissions fell to a historic low of 22,491 in fiscal year (FY) 2018 (down from 84,994 two years earlier); green-card applications dropped 17 percent between FY 2016 and FY 2019; and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program faced repeated attempts at elimination.
- The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the administration's immigration agenda, enabling travel bans, suspension of most visa categories, and a CDC order effectively ending asylum at the southern border under a 1944 public health statute.
- Because changes were layered, technical, and rapid, a successor administration would face enormous political, financial, and bureaucratic hurdles to reverse them.
Through bold, sweeping changes as well as less-noted technical adjustments, the Trump administration has dramatically reshaped the U.S. immigration system since entering office in January 2017. Now well into its fourth year, the administration has undertaken more than 400 executive actions on immigration, spanning everything from border and interior enforcement, to refugee resettlement and the asylum system, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the immigration courts, and vetting and visa processes. This reports offers a comprehensive catalog, by topic, of those actions, including their dates and the underlying source materials.
The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 gave the administration new openings to push forward many of its remaining immigration policy aims. This period has seen bans on travel and a pause on visa issuance for certain groups of foreign nationals and a further closing off of the U.S.-Mexico border that has effectively ended asylum there.
Much of the White House's immigration agenda has been realized in the form of interlocking measures, with regulatory, policy, and programmatic changes driving towards shared policy goals. Though these largely administrative actions could, in theory, be undone by a future administration, this layered approach, coupled with the rapid-fire pace of change, makes it likely that the Trump presidency will have long-lasting effects on the U.S. immigration system.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
A. What Has Changed?
B. Driving Reform through Layered Changes
C. Pushback and the Search for Alternatives
D. Cataloging a Period of Intense Change
2 Pandemic Response
A. Travel Bans and Visa Processing
B. Border Security and Asylum Processing at the U.S.-Mexico Border
C. Interior Enforcement
D. The Immigration Court System
E. Immigration Benefits
3 Immigration Enforcement
A. Border Security
B. Interior Enforcement
4 U.S. Department of Justice
A. Instructions to Immigration Judges
B. Attorney General Referral and Review
5 Humanitarian Flows
A. Refugees
B. Asylum Seekers
C. Unaccompanied Children
D. Temporary Protected Status Recipients
E. Victims of Trafficking and Other Crimes
6 U.S. Department of State
7 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Department of Labor
A. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
B. Immigrant Visas
C. Nonimmigrant Visas
D. Parole
8 Other Actions
9 Conclusion
About the U.S. Immigration Policy Program
The U.S. Immigration Policy Program provides analysis of U.S. immigration pathways, the impacts of enforcement and other policies, and the characteristics of immigrant populations.
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