WASHINGTON — (AP) — President Donald Trump will sign a series of executive orders designed to beef up security at the southern border by relying more on the U.S. military and redefining who gets to become an American, preparing to make good on his defining political promise to crack down on immigration.
But actual execution of such a far-reaching immigration agenda is certain to face legal and logistical challenges.
“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All legal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came," said Trump to thunderous applause Monday as he spoke during his inauguration moments after being sworn into office.
The orders were also previewed Monday by an incoming White House official before Trump takes office will aim to end asylum access, send troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, suspend the refugee program, force people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico and end birthright citizenship. There was little detail on specifically how these broad plans would be executed.
Many of the steps echoed previous ones during Trump's first administration that also faced lawsuits. Others — like the effort to end the constitutional right to automatic citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. — marked sweeping new strategies that are expected to elicit pushback in the courts.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details before the orders are signed, some of them soon after he's inaugurated Monday.
Immigrant communities around the country have been bracing for a crackdown that the incoming Republican president had been promising throughout his campaign and again at a rally Sunday.
The orders previewed were less specific about how Trump will fulfill his pledge of mass deportations of at least 11 million people already in the country illegally. One edict will equip immigration officers with “authorities needed” to enforce the law.
Trump and his aides have repeatedly said they would scrap President Joe Biden’s deportation priorities, which focused on people with criminal records and those who are national security threats, to include all people without legal status.
A key announcement was the effort to end birthright citizenship — one of Trump’s most sweeping immigration efforts yet.
Birthright citizenship means anyone born in the United States automatically becomes an American citizen, a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment that was ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War and assured citizenship for all, including Black people.
It applies to children born to someone in the country illegally or in the U.S. on a tourist or student visa who plans to return to their home country. Trump's effort to end that right is certain to face steep legal challenges, and the incoming White House official provided no information on how he intends to carry it out.
Trump also intends to suspend refugee resettlement for four months, the official said. That's a program that for decades has allowed hundreds of thousands of people from around the world fleeing war and persecution to come to the United States.
Trump similarly suspended the refugee program at the beginning of his first term, and then after reinstating it, cut the numbers of refugees admitted into the country every year.
The Trump administration also intends to designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and specifically aims to crack down on the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and will remove those gang members from the country. The homegrown street gang was born in Venezuela but has become a menace even on American soil and exploded into the U.S. presidential campaign amid a spree of kidnappings, extortion and other crimes throughout the western hemisphere tied to a mass exodus of Venezuelan migrants.
The incoming administration also will order an end to releasing migrants in the U.S. while they await immigration court hearings, a practice known as “catch-and-release,” but officials didn’t say how they would pay for the enormous costs associated with detention.
Trump plans to “end asylum,” presumably going beyond what Biden has done to severely restrict it. It is unclear what the incoming administration will do with people of nationalities whose countries don’t take back their citizens, such as Nicaragua and Venezuela.
And it would reinstate the first Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced about 70,000 asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. That measure would require cooperation from Mexico, and it is unclear how it jibes with pledges to end asylum altogether.
Mexico, a country integral to any American effort to limit illegal immigration, weighed in Monday morning, indicating they were prepared to receive asylum seekers that the U.S. makes wait in Mexico while emphasizing that there should be some sort of online application allowing them to schedule appointments at the U.S. border.
Currently there's an online process called CBP One that was used by the Biden administration that has allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country to pursue asylum claims. Although there was no specific reference to CBP One during the call with reporters Monday, incoming officials have repeatedly said they will ax it immediately along with another program that allowed 30,000 migrants from four countries to enter the U.S. provided they have a financial sponsor.
Trump will order the government, with Defense Department assistance, to “finish” construction of the border wall, though the official didn’t say how much territory that would cover. Barriers currently span about 450 miles (720 kilometers), slightly more than one-third of the border. Many areas that aren’t covered are in Texas, including inhospitable terrain where migrants rarely cross.
Sending troops to the border is a strategy that Trump has used before, as has Biden. In 2018, Trump deployed 800 active-duty troops to assist Border Patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans. And in 2023, with the U.S. preparing to end pandemic-era restrictions on immigration, the Biden administration sent 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Both administrations also used National Guard troops along the border.
The official did not say how many troops Trump was planning to send, saying that would be up to the secretary of defense or what their role would be when they get there.
Historically, troops have been used to back up Border Patrol agents, who are responsible for securing the nearly 2,000-mile border separating the U.S. from Mexico and not in roles that put them in direct contact with migrants.
Critics have said that sending troops to the border sends the signal that migrants are a threat.
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