What the Day One EOs Tell Us About the Trump Administration's Approach to Immigration
Donald Trump’s day one avalanche of promised executive orders were more about advancing disorder, nativist divisions, and scapegoating immigrants than about lowering the costs of groceries, childcare, and housing for working families. As noted in a Bluesky thread earlier this week:
The sum total of the coming day-one Executive Orders is a declaration that they believe they get to decide who is a "real American," assaulting the Constitution to redefine the bounds of citizenship and using their neo-nationalism as justification for their authoritarian designs.
We could expect dozens and even hundreds more executive orders within these first few weeks of the new administration based on what Trump, his top aides, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 told us would happen.
But what is made undeniably clear by the first-day actions of the Trump administration is that its approach to immigration is filtered through the distorted lens of the white nationalist replacement theory, radically restricting immigration to fit that vision and not what is in the best interests of the American people. Nor is it driven by concerns for public safety or national security. Instead, it is a politics of nativist fear used to sell a larger authoritarian project.
Here are three things to know about the radical approach of the second Trump administration in the day one executive orders:
They attacked the Constitution, targeting the 14th Amendment – which first granted citizenship to freed slaves and has defined citizenship in the United States for the last 150 years – to radically redefine who gets to be an American.
They employed the replacement theory concept, asserting that immigrants constitute a literal military “invasion” as legal justification for their sweeping nativist agenda.
In opposition to their claims of law and order, they removed the prioritization of resources for targeting criminals and pardoned the violent white nationalists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
For a more in-depth look, read the National Immigration Law Center’s comprehensive and excellent summary of all the day-one executive orders HERE.
UNCONSTITUTIONAL ATTACK ON 14TH AMENDMENT AND BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
One of the most revealing executive orders that Trump signed on his first day in office was a gift to the white nationalists who from the fringes have long pushed for an assault on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. While there are serious legal questions and several lawsuits already challenging this birthright citizenship executive order, Trump’s normalization of this radical idea will have long-lasting downstream consequences, even if his attempt is blocked by the courts. This executive order is not about addressing the challenges of migration, but striking a deeper question of who is an American.
Trump’s executive order challenges birthright citizenship, the cornerstone of citizenship in the United States that for the last 150 years has held that those born in the United States are U.S. citizens (with some exceptions, like the children of foreign diplomats). Now, the Trump administration wants to turn every delivery room into an immigration checkpoint and every OBGYN into an immigration officer to check the papers of every parent.
The EO argues that “if the mother is undocumented or here with temporary permission, and if the father was not a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth,” the National Immigration Law Center said. “Trump’s long-term goal is to create a permanent underclass of people in this country who are denied basic rights, leaving them subject to abuse, exploitation, and violence. It was wrong before the 14th Amendment was adopted at the end of the Civil War and it is wrong now.”
As legal experts have noted, the decree defies the U.S. Constitution and more than a century of Supreme Court precedent. 1898’s U.S. v Wong Kim Ark, launched by a Chinese American man who had been denied entry into the U.S. despite being born in San Francisco, affirmed that birthright citizenship was guaranteed in the 14th Amendment. “It’s critical to remember that the 14th Amendment was enacted to overrule the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision,” America’s Voice legal advisor David Leopold previously noted, “which held that Black people born in the U.S. were not citizens, but chattel to be bought, sold and abused.”
Disturbingly, the replacement theory guides much of this effort. Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and a key stop in the anti-immigrant judicial pipeline, has already argued the bigoted conspiracy that immigrants constitute an “invasion.” This white nationalist conspiracy theory then forms the legal argument that immigrants are an “invading force” and, therefore, are not granted birthright citizenship. The role the replacement theory has here cannot be ignored. The fears of immigrants replacing “real” Americans drive the “need" for the executive order and is likely to stake its legal claim on the assertion that immigrants constitute an invasion. This white nationalist lie forms the complete packaging of this executive order.
Beyond the legal implications, this Constitutional assault strikes at the heart of our best ideals and the very motto of our nation – e pluribus unum, out of many, one. Or said another way, this is Trump proclaiming that he is the sole arbiter of who gets to be an American.
We must also think of the practical implications under Trump’s unconstitutional order. “Will physicians be required to report pregnancy and maternity information to ICE?” Leopold asks. “Will ICE post agents in hospitals?” And what will be the consequences of intentionally creating “stateless” children? These aren’t theoretical questions. The rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution now being attacked by the new administration are material to everyone’s existence and wellbeing in this country. This is not just about deporting the undocumented, as Leopold writes. U.S. citizens are in the crosshairs too.
NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARATION BASED ON DEADLY “INVASION” CONSPIRACY THEORY
Confirming previously reported plans, Trump has invoked deadly white nationalist “invasion” conspiracy theory in order to declare a legally-dubious national emergency at the southern border as part of his “bloody” mass deportation agenda. The plan seeks to “unlock various federal national security and emergency authorities in service of President Trump’s mass deportation plan,” the National Immigration Law Center stated. “The Executive Order contemplates calling up the reserves and national guard to assist the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).”
But this sweeping nativist agenda also has wide-ranging implications that go far beyond immigration and the border. One of the most pressing of these is that the “emergency tools” sought by the Trump administration will be used as an excuse to carry out its authoritarianism and deploy the U.S. military onto U.S. streets to carry out mass roundups, including of Americans exercising their right to peacefully assemble. Simply put, a national emergency declaration “does not allow the Trump administration to skirt core constitutional rights afforded to all individuals within the United States,” as the National Immigration Law Center stated.
Trump’s white nationalist inspired declaration is also alarming because it moves from dangerous conspiratorial rhetoric to substantive justification for using draconian powers against the general populace. Critical here is the intentional use of “invasion,” which is not being used simply as an adjective. Instead, it is a constructed Constitutional argument to create the legal pretext of the nativist agenda. The claim that immigrants constitute a literal invasion is the basis for the most draconian measures, including the pretext to review the use of violent force in repealing those seeking safety in the U.S.
The “invasion” conspiracy theory also has also inspired a pattern of deadly terrorist attacks across the U.S., including in places like El Paso in 2019, when a white supremacist gunman obsessed with a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” carried out the deadliest attack against U.S. Latinos in our modern history.
“Between his decision to issue pardons and commutations for the assault on January 6th, led by known white supremacists and extremists, and his militarized anti-immigrant actions to promote white nationalist goals, Donald Trump’s first day in office made the country less safe for Jews and so many others, and more welcoming to those who threaten us, said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “The same anti-democratic conspiracy theories that led to January 6th have fixated on targeting and demonizing immigrant communities and the very values at the core of inclusive democracy. By declaring a national emergency at our southern border, reinstating the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, and ordering the arrest and mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, President Trump’s executive orders today intend to validate the false idea that immigration represents an ‘invasion’ that must be countered by force and cruel, draconian crackdowns. By refusing to recognize birthright citizenship for children born in the US to immigrants who lack legal status, the Trump Administration is also violating the 14th amendment to the Constitution.”
REMOVING ENFORCEMENT PRIORITIES AND MAKING MOMS AND DADS OF U.S. CITIZENS A TARGET
Trump has also rescinded common sense immigration enforcement guidelines that formerly prioritized individuals who were convicted of serious criminal charges or were deemed to be a risk to public safety, and now seeks to target hardworking moms and dads of American citizen children as part of their nativist agenda. “By removing any semblance of prioritization or discretion,” the National Immigration Law Center said, “the Trump administration is loudly announcing it intends to go after any undocumented person in the United States, regardless of how long they’ve lived in the community or how many loved ones rely upon them.”
Trump and his allies have tossed these common sense priorities despite spending the 2024 campaign insisting that their “bloody” mass deportation would prioritize so-called “criminals.” But as America’s Voice Research Associate Yuna Oh previously noted, this has already been the long-held Democratic position, including of the former Biden administration. And, the first Trump administration already offered a preview of the kind of immigrants who stand to be swept up. “Several long-settled immigrants, from U.S. veterans to a new father to refugees fleeing religious persecution to moms, were part of Trump’s first mass deportation under his enforcement priorities,” Oh wrote. “They had no criminal background or broken a single law but were sent away from their friends and loved ones.” And, it’ll stand to get worse, following the administration's rescission of a long-standing memo that made schools, hospitals, and houses of worship off-limits to most enforcement raids.
Trump is also seeking to make the kind of spectacle that would make it difficult for the public – which expressed backlash to some of Trump’s most heinous immigration policies from his first term – to differentiate who exactly is getting detained. Going after bad guys is nothing new. But this isn’t about public safety at all, instead it’s about parading a handcuffed mom or dad in front of cameras to mislead viewers and make them believe everyone on a perp walk deserves to be there. Trump will “slander everyone arrested as a criminal or gang member when, in reality, he will have deprioritize criminals and diverted resources away from serious threats,” immigration policy expert David Bier wrote in a Bluesky thread.
The Trump administration's claims of law and order and national security are further undermined by the sweeping pardons of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Without review, Trump released 1,500 known violent criminals onto the streets with the encouragement that violence on behalf of Trump and his perceived enemies will not be punished. The serious downstream consequences and the real threat to public safety for all Americans is hard to fully comprehend. However, the assertion made in Trump’s EOs that the draconian anti-immigrant policies were in the name of public safety is belied by the pardons, and ones that AP described as the leader of the “neofacist Proud Boys group” and another who “discussed the prospect of a 'bloody' civil war."