The fight against illegal immigration was how Trump stood out, for better or for worse, in the 2016 Republican primaries. A central factor in Trump’s victory in 2024 was the massive flow of migrants across the border caused by the Biden administration’s boneheaded reversal of his policies.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Trump is president because people wanted tough policies on illegal immigration.

So what will Trump do and try to do about illegal immigration in a second term?

First, it will try to fix the holes created by the Biden administration, which thoughtlessly invited millions of undocumented “asylum seekers” and created a humanitarian crisis.

Second, he will stop the abuse of the executive branch’s selective enforcement power and other discretionary powers—those that the Biden and Obama administrations have used to effectively legalize illegal immigration and otherwise massively liberalize immigration.

Third, he will try to fortify the border, possibly with military forces.

Finally, Trump’s biggest promise, and the most vexing to his critics, is what his former border boss Mark Morgan calls “large-scale removal policies” but is more commonly known as “mass deportation.” .

Stay in Mexico again

Perhaps the Biden administration’s costliest policy mistake was its decision to renege on the deals Trump struck with Central American leaders under which those allied countries agreed to take in migrants seeking asylum.

Dubbed the “Remain in Mexico” and “Safe Third Country” agreements, these policies have been crucial in stemming the massive flows of migrants to the southern border.

The millions who have arrived at the U.S. border in the past decade have mostly not tried to sneak past border patrol inside the U.S. Instead, they usually showed up at the border and claimed to be seeking asylum from their countries of origin – Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, etc. And if they were indeed persecuted in Colombia, there is no reason why they could not remain in Panama.

These asylum seekers, however, generally did not have valid claims. They were not persecuted. They wanted to move to the United States for the same reason most of the world wants to move here: America is the land of opportunity, with plenty of work and high wages. That is, they are economic migrants.

Economic migrants have always been a part of America and we welcome many every day, but they should get visas. Instead, floods of migrants in recent years have sought asylum because the patchwork of US laws, court rulings and enforcement decisions have made the system easy to abuse.

A migrant arrives at the border, applies for asylum and is given a court date. Because we don’t have the capacity to keep all of these people safe at the border, the migrant is usually released to the US pending that court date, which may be months in the future. At that time, law enforcement may not be able to find these migrants.

The “Remain in Mexico” deal called for asylum seekers to remain south of the border while awaiting a U.S. hearing date. The intent was not to house hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in Mexico, but to discourage them from ever coming to the US border.

If a Guatemalan man knows he doesn’t have a valid asylum case, he won’t cross 1,000 miles of Mexican desert to be turned back at the border and told to wait in Reynosa, Mexico. Trump has largely solved the migrant crisis by making these deals.

Biden killed these accords upon taking office and thereby induced millions of Central and Southern Americans to make the perilous journey to the Rio Grande.

Restoring these agreements will be a priority for the Trump administration. “He’s already threatened to use the tariffs to bring” the governments of Mexico and other Latin American countries “on board,” says Morgan, Trump’s former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

Enforce the law, fortify the border

Another Biden abuse that the Trump administration will likely put an end to is the excessive use of the parole power for illegal immigrants.

Federal law gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to temporarily allow an inadmissible alien to enter the country on a temporary basis “on a case-by-case basis for significant public benefit.” But the Biden administration has granted parole to entire classes of illegal immigrants, which Morgan argues is against the law.

Trump is likely to declare a national border emergency on day one, as he did in 2019. Biden, upon taking office in 2021, revoked that declaration and in the process triggered a border emergency.

That designation would give the administration some leeway to quickly shift funds toward border security measures.

Ken Cuccinelli, a top Homeland Security official in Trump’s first term, called for “troops on the border.” The US military has long cooperated with the Border Patrol, providing logistical and technological resources – for example, surveillance drones. Cuccinelli and Morgan argue that deploying troops along the border would be within the bounds of precedent.

Mass deportations

The most controversial part of Trump’s illegal immigration plan is mass deportation.

Over 10 million aliens are in the US illegally, and the Biden administration has decided to do next to nothing about it. Trump logistically can’t remove them all, but his team hopes to deport many of them, thereby encouraging many more to self-deport — and discouraging new entrants.

Cuccinelli says 1.3 million deportation orders are pending and about 500,000 illegal immigrants have criminal records. Finding and eliminating these criminals would be the first step.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement would need to bring in reinforcements for such a massive project, as it only has about 6,000 officers carrying out moves. U.S. marshals and local sheriff’s departments have experience finding and apprehending lawbreakers, and many Trump allies have suggested they could help with deportation efforts.

Sanctuary laws are an obvious obstacle to these efforts. Cuccinelli says Congress should freeze federal aid to sanctuary cities and counties until they agree to cooperate with ICE.

Another priority will be recent illegal entrants.

Cuccinelli and Morgan both stress that prioritizing felons or recent entrants does not mean ignoring otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants. If ICE officers find a drug dealer here illegally and he lives in an apartment with four other illegal immigrants, Cuccinelli says, they all can and should be removed.

The proper way to exercise discretion and compassion, Morgan argues, is to waive the standard ban on legal reentry. Typically, someone deported for illegal entry cannot apply for a visa for years. If a law-abiding mother and her children are apprehended by ICE and cooperate, Morgan says, the Department of Homeland Security can allow them to immediately apply for legal re-entry.

Trump would never call it “amnesty,” but DHS could offer such a deal to anyone leaving here illegally voluntarily: self-deport and go straight to the US Consulate to apply for a visa. Such a deal would become more attractive if it were known that ICE deports every illegal immigrant the agency encounters.

The common theme is that incentives are key here. The first Trump administration reduced incentives to come up with its policy to stay in Mexico, and Trump may do so again in his second term. Swift and effective deportation can create another incentive to enter and an incentive to leave voluntarily. A more robust wall, with more surveillance and manpower along the border, may also make the prospect of sneaking into the country less attractive.

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If Trump’s illegal immigration policy works well, it won’t lead to many arrests at the border and a steady stream of deportations. It will mean fewer people trying to enter illegally, fewer economic migrants seeking asylum and those here illegally leaving on their own.

It’s not a vision of mass arrests and breaking down doors, it’s a vision of law and order.