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As the full picture of the 2024 election results begins to come into focus, here are some key criminal justice takeaways about President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal cases, proposed immigration policies, justice reform, and those ubiquitous and misleading transgender TV ads in prisons.

Trump’s criminal cases are unlikely to continue.

Trump’s victory”practically guarantees that he will never face serious legal liability” in any of the four separate criminal cases for which he was indicted, Politico reports.

On Friday morning, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith called for a recess the two federal cases against Trump for his alleged retention of classified documents and his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. It is a long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted and cases cannot be concluded before Trump takes over the mandate. Trump said he would fire Smith immediately after taking office, but Smith is expected to resign before inauguration day. Smith they might choose to publish their findings before leaving, and it remains to be seen whether Trump will try to impose legal consequences on Smith for leading the prosecution. Trump previously said that Smith should “go to jail” and “be kicked out of the country.”

In New York, where Trump was found guilty of multiple counts of falsifying business records earlier this year, experts predict that Judge Juan Merchan will likely not impeach Trump on Nov. 26 as currently scheduled. Even if he receives a sentence, it will be suspended until after he leaves office, and it remains possible that the courts will overturn his conviction on the grounds of presidential immunity.

A a similar outcome is likely in Georgiawhere Trump and a number of his allies face charges related to alleged efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. The long case expected to be delayed until leaving office or fired for the same reasons.

However, experts say several pending civil cases against Trump could, in theory, continue while he is in office, pointing to a 1997 Supreme Court decision that allowed a civil action against then-President Bill Clinton.

People convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 uprising also expect their legal problems to go away under Trump and are “alignment” for presidential pardons. In a case this week in which a defendant tried to delay his sentence on news of Trump’s election, however, the request was quickly dismissed by the judge.

The backlash against criminal justice reform was evident, but not the whole story.

California voters approved Proposition 36which stiffens criminal penalties for some property and drug crimes in the state. The measure passed on the power of lingering fear and frustration around crime and disorderespecially viral incidents of retail theft and more visible homeless populations and outdoor drug use – even though real crime rates continue to fall. The effort is largely aimed at undoing the reforms that voters approved a decade ago, which were aimed at reducing the state’s prison population.

A review by the state’s nonpartisan fiscal advisor found that the change would likely lead to “several thousand” people in prison and costs in the “hundreds of millions” of dollars annually.

Cristine Soto DeBerry, executive director of Prosecutors Alliance Action, a progressive reform group, said in a statement that the passage was disappointing, but said it was not evidence that Californians were worse off by the reform. “It actually shows that Californians are in favor of policies that prioritize treatment and rehabilitation,” DeBarry said, pointing to an aspect of the law that requires people with multiple drug charges to complete treatment or serve time.

DeBerry continued, “Unfortunately, Prop 36 will not deliver the support promised,” a conclusion. picked up by the Los Angeles Times editorial board this week.

In the state’s largest city, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón lost to Republican challenger Nathan Hochman, who pledged to undo the “social experiment” of its predecessor in progressive prosecution practices. Hochman ran well on Gascón’s right but also he pledged to preserve some of the reforms introduced by the officeincluding maintaining a conviction integrity unit to look at overturning old and defective convictions.

It wasn’t all bad news for criminal justice reform advocates. Also, the reformist prosecutors won races against opponents by promising more punitive approaches in places like Lake County, Illinois; Oakland County, Michigan; and Albany County, New York. And in Florida, Monique Worrell he won his job back after Gov. Ron DeSantis booted her from office last year, claiming she failed in her duty by choosing not to prosecute some cases.

The reforming prosecutors who remain may face new political forces aligned against them. The Houston Chronicle reports that after financially supporting Trump’s campaign, billionaire Elon Musk is now setting his sights on the prosecutors. Trump also has promised to crack down on what he calls “radical Marxist prosecutors” in a second term.

Trump’s allies say planning has already begun for a promised immigration crackdown. Meanwhile, migrants share mixed feelings about his win.

Trump’s team is planning quickly move on to promises of increased border enforcement and it begins mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Senior advisers told CNN that plans to start by restoring border policies from Trump’s first termstarting with the deportation of immigrants who have committed crimes. They are also considering how and whether to pursue the deportation of people brought to the U.S. as young children, commonly known as Dreamers. Trump advisers expressed confidence that Americans would be willing to tolerate more extreme border policies than they were during Trump’s first presidency, based on public attitudes regarding immigration. Meanwhile, immigration advocates are bracing for a possibility avalanche of legal challenges to the Trump administration’s policy.

Immigration detention is run primarily by private companies, and the nation’s two big ones, CoreCivic and GeoGroup, have both seen their Stock prices rose on Election Day.

Some migrants in New York City expressed terror in response to Trump’s election and the increased likelihood of being deported in dangerous conditions to their countries of origin. Many members of the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, about whom Trump has spread false rumors, he contemplates his fate even now.

Meanwhile, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke with several Latinos migrants without permanent legal status who were delighted by Trump’s win. Some said they didn’t take Trump’s deportation threats literally, thought Kamala Harris was too left-wing or that Trump would be good for the economy. Some New York immigrants who have been in the U.S. longer and who are eligible to vote, shared similar sentiments with DocumentedNY.

NBC News reported this week that the Biden administration is preparing for the possibility of increasing border arrivals of migrants trying to cross before Trump takes office in January. Others may already be giving up. According to Reuters, a group of about 3,000 migrants traveling through Mexico to the US border dropped by about half since the election results were announced.

The Trump campaign made a major investment in ads attacking Kamala Harris over her stance on gender-affirming care for transgender people in prisons and immigration detention.

In the months leading up to the election, viewers across the country, especially football fans, saw hundreds of ads claiming: “Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners.” An announcement featured a clip of Harris herself telling an interviewer, “every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.”

Some from the right commentators I now claim that this ad “may have moved the needle on Trump.” A Trump adviser said The Washington Post that “trans issues and men in girls’ sports, that whole topic is the hottest topic at Trump’s rallies, but I was a little surprised that it carried over to Democrats and everybody, including black men.”

As with most political ads, the reality is more nuanced than the ads claim. Prisons are required by law to provide medical care to incarcerated persons. The Supreme Court said prison officials cannot show “deliberate indifference” to a substantial risk of serious harm—and lower courts have found time and time again that failure to adequately treat gender dysphoria do exactly that. Having said that, transgender people make up a small part of those held in federal prisons — the only prisons over which the president has authority — about 1 percent, according to Bureau of Prisons data. Among them, the number of those seeking sex-affirmation surgery is even lower. The federal prison system has offered such surgery only twice — both under the Biden-Harris administration, only after a judge ordered officials to do so. Other gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy, makes up about one-tenth of 1 percent of the prison system’s health care budget, according to the data. office numbers — and it was also provided to federal prisoners under the first Trump administration.

The irony is that Harris made the statement that Trump’s announcement found outrageous — that under her presidency, “every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access” — as some kind of apology to the trans community after she argued against providing gender-affirming surgery in humans incarcerated in California during her time as Attorney General.