Michael Grunwald's item about Trump's dog and pony show Executive Orders is a good read. Anybody who has read any of the text of Trump's orders knows they don't amount to much more than 'get me a report' or 'rename this office.' There's even the 'do what you're already doing, but more bigly' order. Grunwald's case against Trump is dead on. His EOs are bullshit and he clearly can't get anything important out of his own GOP Congress. Trump is a collosal failure at government.
Except in the area of the crackdown on immigrants.
Granted, his only two substantive orders on the travel ban and sanctuary cities are blocked for now. His border wall is dead. But the federal resources he has at his disposal are fully engaged in rounding up the undesirable brown people:
In fact, immigration is the policy area where Trump’s executive orders are having the most impact, even though his travel ban and now his sanctuary cities restrictions have been hung up in court. That’s because he didn’t need to change any laws or rules to launch a crackdown on illegal immigration, which was already illegal, or to start pursuing undocumented immigrants without criminal records, who were already unauthorized to live in the United States. After Trump signed orders on border security and immigration enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security issued “implementation memos” that reversed Obama’s policies of turning a blind eye to most non-criminal aliens and reuniting undocumented children with their families in the U.S. The era of catch-and-release is over; arrests at the Mexican border have dropped by two thirds, while arrests of non-criminal aliens inside the U.S. have more than doubled. Trump sent a message, and federal border and immigration agents have gotten the message.
President Obama also led a broad crackdown on immigrants, deporting millions. He cracked down on border security. The idea was to get some cooperation from Congress on legalization and settle the matter. That bill passed the Senate but was blocked by the GOP in the House. President Obama then changed his approach and began using his prosecutorial discretion powers to look the other way except in cases of violent felons. He stepped up the naturalization process. This pissed off the alt-right immensely. It is the core reason they exist.
Trump didn't need an executive order to change the policy. A memo to the appropriate agencies to aggressively enforce existing laws and regulations would have sufficed. But that small matter aside, Trump is doing exactly the first thing, the first message he sent to America when he called Mexican-Americans killers and rapists. On his core promise to be cruel to brown people, he has done his duty to his voters.
If you can't understand why 98% of his voters are sticking with Trump despite him breaking every other promise he made and failing at almost everything, you can clear your mind. Its the crackdown on brown people.