In the spirit of the season, the Washington Examiner has identified 12 issues we believe will shape and influence 2025 and beyond. The incoming Trump administration has made the fight against illegal immigration and the use of tariffs its flagship policy items. The U.S. will also possibly undergo a health revolution, while very real questions need to be answered on everything from Social Security reform to the military to the changing landscape of the energy sector. Part 1 is on illegal immigration.

President-elect Donald Trump’s signature issue of immigration and border security will occupy much of his first day in office come Jan. 20, 2025.

Trump’s plans, including a mass deportation and illegal immigration curbs, have been the subject of much debate in the transition period as opponents and supporters await his final decisions.

Executive orders to restore Trump’s policies

Trump’s day one executive orders on immigration will be far-reaching with possible plans to:

• End birthright citizenship for all would-be Americans;
• Re-implement a plan for asylum-seekers to live and remain in Mexico through court proceedings;
• Impose a bar on asylum-seekers who have traversed through other countries but not sought refuge there;
• Expanded detention facilities to detain illegal immigrants arrested during the deportation proceedings;
• Rescind instructions to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that it focus only on the worst criminals in the United States;
• Carry out the largest-ever massive deportation the country has seen;
• Potentially impose sanctions or withhold foreign aid to countries that refuse to take their citizens back;
• Stop the use of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One app for the purpose of immigration.

Work with Congress to fund border security through reconciliation

House and Senate Republicans are endorsing a two-step approach to enact the incoming Trump administration agenda early next Congress, seeing up a border security-focused reconciliation bill followed by tax legislation.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R-MD) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) put House and Senate leadership on notice in late December that a border bill must take priority in January.

Past border bills, as well as Democrat-proposed comprehensive immigration reform packages, have been major headaches for Congress, unwilling to make concessions and pass needed money for national security.

In their letter to Thune and Johnson, the lawmakers said the first reconciliation bill introduced in the 119th Congress should provide four years of funding to finish border wall projects, of which more than half of the 2,000-mile border remains without a barrier; hire thousands more CBP employees, as well as ICE employees; and significantly increase space for immigrant detention.

The bill should also limit in most instances any noncitizen’s ability to apply for and receive taxpayer-funded welfare benefits, with exceptions for lawful permanent residents, as well as come up with a plan to encourage illegal immigrants in the country to leave without being deported by the government.

“[Americans] want operational control of the border again. We are going to deliver real border security right up front and no more kicking the can down the road,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) at a news conference at the Capitol on Dec. 19.

Enforce laws with immigration hardliners leading the charge 

Trump nominated Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security a week after his election.

He also announced immigration hawks Stephen Miller and Tom Homan for key roles in the White House to carry out the deportation of illegal immigrants and lead border policy. Miller will be Trump’s deputy chief for policy and Homan will serve in a new position as border czar. Unlike Noem, Miller and Homan will not need to be confirmed by the Senate. 

The Trump administration plans to deport criminal illegal immigrants and anyone who an immigration judge has already ordered be removed from the country, totaling 1 million to 2 million people.

ICE currently employs 7,000 officers who conduct 250,000 deportations a year, according to the agency. If Trump’s administration wanted to quadruple this number, as Trump has promised, training academies couldn’t handle a deluge of new hires.

Homan told the Washington Examiner in mid-December that there would be “a lot of collateral arrests,” in addition to those aforementioned — meaning that illegal immigrant children and family members found living with criminals would also be swept up and deported.

“In sanctuary cities, expect a lot of collateral arrests,” Homan said. “I mean, not priority criminal arrests. We can’t get the bad guy in jail. That means we have to go into the communities and find them, and there may be others. We expect a lot of collateral arrests.”

Anthony Romero, executive president of the American Civil Liberties Union, told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Dec. 16 that it, too, was ramping up its team and operations for the forthcoming Trump administration.

“When they’re going to try to detain, deport all these hundreds of thousands, up to a million people, that’s an operation that they have the legal power to do, to do the raids, but the logistics and they’re going to need mayors and governors or city councilors [to] either give them access to police officers or not jails. We’re going to house all these folks,” said Romero.

“Part of what we’re doing is we’re preparing executive orders and we’re organizing our folks to put pressures on elected officials so they don’t roll over,” Romero continued. “They should sever these relationships they have with the federal government on immigration enforcement. They should make sure that our prisons and our and our jails are off-limits. They should begin to think about what actions they could take to pardon immigrants who have a criminal record because they drove on a suspended license. Let’s take them out of harm’s way.”

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Sanctuary cities are places that will not turn over illegal immigrants into custody to federal officials, forcing the federal police to find and arrest individuals outside of a jail setting, making the task more challenging and a risk to the general public.

While Romero admitted that the raids were legal and not unfounded, he added that the ACLU was working behind the scenes to pressure city and state governments to clean up records for those who could be targeted by the Trump administration.