Trump’s return to the White House sets the stage for far-reaching immigration crackdown

SAN DIEGO — “Build the wall” was Donald Trump’s slogan in 2016, and he made good on his promise by committing military budgets to hundreds of miles of wall along the Mexican border. “Mass deportation” is the buzzword that has galvanized supporters of his 2024 White House bid.

Trump’s victory sets the stage for a swift crackdown after an AP VoteCast poll found the president-elect’s supporters were largely focused on immigration and inflation, issues the Republican has raised throughout his campaign.

How and when Trump’s actions on immigration will take shape is unclear.

While Trump and his advisers have proposed broad provisions, many questions remain about how they would deport the estimated 11 million people estimated to be in the country illegally. How will immigrants be identified? Where will they be detained? What if their countries refuse to take them back? Where will Trump find the money and train officers to deport them?

Trump said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country with which the United States is at war. He talked about deploying the National Guard, which could be activated by order of the governor. Stephen Miller, Trump’s top adviser, said troops led by sympathetic Republican governors would be sent to neighboring states that refused to participate.

Trump, who has repeatedly said immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States, has struck fear into immigrant communities with his words alone.

Julie Moreno, a US citizen who has been married to a Mexican man in the country illegally for seven years, is coming to terms with the idea that she may have to live separately from her husband, who came to the US in 2004. She could move to Mexico from New Jersey, but continuing to run the boxing glove import business would be nearly impossible.

“I don’t have words yet, there are too many feelings,” Moreno said, her voice cracking as she spoke Wednesday of Trump’s victory. “I am very afraid for the safety of my husband. … If they detain him, what will happen?”

Moreno’s husband, Neftali Juarez, was in the construction business and feels he contributed to the country by paying taxes and providing jobs through his company. “Unfortunately, the mood of the people who voted is different,” he said. “I feel terrible losing my wife.”

Some political experts expect Trump’s first immigration moves to be at the border. He could pressure Mexico to continue blocking migrants’ access to the U.S. border, as it has done since December. He can count on Mexico to reinstate Trump-era policies that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court.

Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports immigration restrictions, emphasized Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s campaign remarks that deporting millions would be done in stages rather than all at once.

“You’re not talking about a seine,” Arthur, a former immigration judge, told The Associated Press. “There is no way to do this. The first thing you need to do is seal the border and then you can work on the inside. This will all depend on the resources you have available.”

Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has been living in the U.S. illegally for 25 years, could not sleep after Trump’s victory and cried about what to do if she and her 50-year-old husband were deported. They have two adult daughters, both U.S. citizens, who have developed stomach pains and breathing problems due to election anxiety.

“It’s so hard for me to leave the country that I call home,” said Elena, who lives in South Florida and gave only her first name for fear of deportation. “I’m rooted here and it’s hard for me to give up everything to start over.”

Advocates are studying where deportation arrests might occur and are especially looking at whether authorities are adhering to a longstanding policy of avoiding schools, hospitals, places of worship and disaster relief centers, said Heidi Altman, federal advocacy director for the National Immigration Act. Immigrant Justice Center Fund.

“We take this very seriously,” Altman said. “We should all be widely aware of the fact that this is not 2016. Trump and Stephen Miller learned a lot from their first administration. The courts look very different than they did four years ago.”

Trump is expected to resume other far-reaching policies from his first term and reverse Biden’s key moves. These include:

— Trump sharply criticized Biden’s policies to create and expand legal entry routes, including an online application called CBP One that has helped nearly 1 million people enter land border crossings with Mexico since January 2023. Another policy allowed more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to fly into the country with financial sponsors.

— Trump has cut the number of refugees screened abroad by the United Nations and State Department for settlement in the United States to the lowest level since Congress established the program in 1980. Biden overhauled it, setting an annual limit of 125,000, up from 18,000 under Trump.

— Trump has sought to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected people who came to the U.S. as young children from deportation. The Republican governors’ lawsuit, which appears to have already headed to the Supreme Court, challenges DACA. Currently, hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients can renew their status, but new applications are not being accepted.

— Trump has sharply limited the use of Temporary Protected Status, created under a 1990 law that allows people already in the United States to remain if their home country is deemed unsafe. Biden has dramatically expanded the use of TPS, including to hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Venezuelans.

Maribel Hernandez, a Venezuelan who signed a TPS agreement allowing her to remain in the United States until April 2025, broke down in tears as her 2-year-old son slept in a stroller outside New York’s Roosevelt Hotel as migrants discussed the fallout from the election Wednesday.

“Imagine if they put an end to this,” she said.