Trump Could Go After Immigration, but Not Without Complications

People at a pro-Trump rally in Anaheim, Calif.,
their support for Trump's proposed changes to immigration
law. Photo: mikeledray / Shutterstock.com

According to legal experts, President-elect Trump could implement many of his proposed changes to immigration without the need for congressional approval, especially if he used the kind of executive power he attacked President Obama for using.

Because he had faced so much resistance from Congress, President Obama resorted to using executive powers to protect more than 740,000 immigrants from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Through DACA, immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children were allowed to apply for work permits.

Trump could reverse DACA with an executive order of his own, and he has said that he will. Many of the DACA-protected immigrants are worried that their addresses and other identifying information could then be used to target them for deportation.

Steve Legomsky, former chief counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told Reuters that no laws would prevent the Trump administration from using program records for immigration enforcement. However, Trump has not said he would do so.

Another point on Trump’s immigration plan was denying visas to people from countries “where adequate screening cannot occur,” could also be accomplished by executive order. This statute has been applied narrowly by previous presidents, but because the law is worded so broadly, it could be applied to entire countries.

However, many of the things that Trump would have to do to uphold his promises would require funding which needs to be approved by Congress. For example, if he moved to end the “catch and release” model of detention, which would mean detaining those immigrants facing hearings until the hearing is held, immigration courts and detention facilities used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement would have to be dramatically expanded—a very expensive proposition.

As it stands, immigration courts have a backlog of about half a million cases, and increased scrutiny of immigration, as well as reducing programs to help immigrants stay here, would increase that number even more.

Spending all that money in order to house immigrants awaiting their trials would likely make few people happy. Trump’s opponents, who are already working on legal challenges to his expected anti-immigrant policies, will use it to criticize him, and his supporters will likely be unhappy that the government will be spending so much to house and feed those people.

If Trump doesn’t get the funding, the only other option is to detain them anyway and risk international backlash. Blindly detaining immigrants could very quickly become an international shame for the nation. It is likely that if Trump follows through on his promises to attack immigration, the United States will certainly look bad in the eyes of the world.