Donald Trump's precious wall with the golden doors that he promised repeatedly will require the approval of Congress to build primarily because (spoiler alert) Mexico isn't paying for that.
But Trump can do plenty of damage to undocumented immigrants via his executive authority, including ending President Obama's 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program giving deportation relief and work permits to more than 700,000 immigrants brought here as minors. Bloomberg reports:
“All of his promises, we take him at his word,” says Greisa Martinez, a DACA beneficiary who’s advocacy director for the nonprofit United We Dream Network. “It’s as grim a scenario as we could be able to lay out.”
Once he takes office in January, Trump can also use his statutory authority to resume and expand agreements with cities, curbed under Obama, to share information about undocumented immigrants and involve local cops in immigration enforcement. He can shift how criteria for work visas are interpreted to keep more people out of the country and undo Obama’s DHS guidance creating immigration pathways for entrepreneurs.
Trump could also rewrite ICE’s current enforcement guidelines, which currently emphasize prioritize going after violent criminals over regular working folks.
That would expose noncriminal immigrants who are longtime residents—and, in many cases, taxpayers—to a greater likelihood of deportation. “It would be chaotic enforcement,” says David Leopold, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “And chaotic enforcement is not safe enforcement.”
Perfect, so instead of going after criminals, ICE agents could be wasting their time going after people contributing to the tax base.