The Top 5 Immigration Changes from Trump’s First 100 Days (https://www.npr.org/2025/04/30/g-s1-63415)
The first months of the year have seen a decline in border crossings due to the changes in the U.S. immigration system. The near-total ban of asylum access outlined in an executive action signed on Jan. 20 has also raised concerns about asylum-seekers in the U.S. who are now being detained and deported without due process.
The funding for groups that help refugees resettle in the U.S. was frozen by the adminstration, amid a broader effort to review federal funding for aid organizations and others. And the Trump administration directed judges within the Justice Department’s system of immigration courts to fast-track certain asylum rejections without a hearing.
Those immigrants include Haitians fleeing gang warfare, Afghans left behind by the United States’ hasty military pullout, Venezuelans escaping dictatorship and economic collapse, and Ukrainians from Russian-occupied areas.
The moves have been challenged by courts and the administration has been sued for cancellation of appointments.
Migrants seeking asylum previously used the app to schedule appointments in the U.S. through a legal authority known as humanitarian parole. The app was used by the Trump administration to encourage people to self-deport.
The Supreme Court ruled that Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States is illegal and violated by the Fourth Amendment and the High Court of Appeals for Human Rights
The Trump administration’s attorney told Coughenour that the member of the bar was unable to state clearly that the order was constitutional. “It boggles my mind.”
Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee in Washington state, was the first to block Trump’s executive order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Attorneys general from 22 states, the ACLU and a group of pregnant mothers and immigration advocates have all sued the Trump administration to stop this executive order from taking effect.
Trump has repeatedly maintained that there is no automatic guarantee of birthright citizenship in the Constitution. That idea is seen as a fringe view in the legal community. The Supreme Court ruled to the contrary in the late 19th century.
The 14th Amendment says that everyone born in the United States is a citizen.
AbregoGarcia doesn’t have a criminal record. He had entered the U.S. illegally and was unable to be deported due to the risk of his life being in danger if he returned.
This month, the Supreme Court sided with a district judge who’d ordered Abrego Garcia brought back to the United States. The high court ruled that the Trump administration should help “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
The immigration judge at the Louisiana facility where Khalil is being held ruled in April that he could be deported because she didn’t have the power to review the decision. She suggested that she could order Khalil deported to Algeria, where he is a citizen, or to his birth country, Syria. Khalil’s lawyers are appealing.
The secretary of state has wide authority when it comes to determining whether a noncitizen’s presence in the US threatens foreign policy goals. Rubio said Khalil’s activism undermined the goal of combating antisemitism worldwide. There is not any evidence to support the claim from the administration.
His deportation is likely not imminent for another reason. The federal judge hearing Khalil’s lawsuit challenging his detention has ordered the government not to remove him from the country while that case moves forward.
Concerns about adequate due process and what legal protections noncitizens are afforded are at the heart of the case of the 29-year-old Maryland man the White House concedes was mistakenly deported in March to a megaprison in El Salvador — despite a 2019 court order barring his removal.
The administration was told to do more to allow AbregoGarcia to be released. The government’s case should be shocking to judges, but also to Americans’ sense of liberty, said a conservative Reagan appointee who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Abrego Garcia was driving home from work as a construction laborer with his 5-year-old son in the car when ICE officers pulled him over. He was arrested. A few days later, Abrego Garcia was put on a flight alongside alleged Tren de Aragua gang members and deported.
The detention of the 30-year-old, Syrian-born graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist, a green-card holder who was in the U.S. legally, has raised serious concerns about free speech rights and due process. The government wants to deport him because of his pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University.
Source: Here are the top 5 immigration changes from Trump’s first 100 days
The High Court’s Appeal on Immigration Decrees in the Presence of Wartime Power: a Response to the ACLU and the Trump Administration
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wrote that the ruling gave questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule.
On April 18, the ACLU filed an emergency appeal with the high court about a different set of migrants set for deportation, saying “dozens or hundreds of” detainees “are in imminent and ongoing jeopardy of being removed from the United States without notice and opportunity to be heard, in direct contravention of” the court’s ruling two weeks earlier. The justices, in an unsigned order late at night, ruled that the government should not “remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”
The high court in early April temporarily upheld the government’s use of the act to deport alleged Tren de Aragua members, with an important caveat: They had to be provided with adequate notice and the opportunity to contest their detentions and deportations on a case-by-case basis.
The White House’s use of wartime authority was denied by a vote of 2 to 1 by judges from the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. There was no opportunity for the alleged gang members to contest the cases. “The removal scheme denies thePlaintiffs even a gossamer thread of due process,” Millett wrote. “No notice, no hearing, no opportunity — zero process — to show that they are not members of the gang, to contest their eligibility for removal under the law, or to invoke legal protections against being sent to a place where it appears likely they will be tortured and their lives endangered.”
Anticipating Trump’s invocation of the act, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward sued to temporarily stop the administration from deporting five Venezuelan men. The government can’t use the act to deport people because of an order issued by a district judge. The planes were in the air when he ordered them to turn around.
The implementation of the immigration crack down has caused fear and confusion across migrant communities, sparked street protests, and spurred a historic battle between the executive and judicial branches over the legality of the effort.
Trump’s supporters strongly support the moves. Some 87% of Republicans approve of the way Trump is handling immigration so far, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
But the partisan divide on the issue is extreme: The same NPR/PBS News/Marist poll shows that only 11% of Democrats, and about a third of independents, approve of his immigration actions.
NPR has carefully tracked the biggest immigration stories, policy changes and legal challenges. The immigration landscape in Trump’s second term has changed because of the top five issues.
Trump’s use of an obscure 18th-century war powers act to expand and expedite deportations raises concerns about potential violations of the constitutional right to due process as outlined in the Fifth Amendment.
The Alien Enemies Act only applies in the case of a declared war or invasion of the United States and it has only been used three times before.
“(Tren de Aragua) is in the process of engaging in warfare against the United States directly or at the direction of the regime in Venezuela,” Trump wrote.
The act has been the focus of lawsuits seeking to stop the Trump administration from implementing it. But this is the first time a judge has ruled that the act cannot be used against people who are alleged gang members invading the United States.
“The court ruled the president can’t unilaterally declare an invasion of the United States and invoke a wartime authority during peacetime,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and lead counsel for the three Venezuelan plaintiffs, said in a statement. “This is a critically important decision that prevents more people from being sent to the notorious CECOT prison (a maximum security prison in El Salvador).”
The court finds that an invasion or incursion must involve an armed force that enters the United States to conduct destructive activities, but the action does not need to be a step towards war.
There has been no reference to an organized, armed group of individuals entering the US at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or take over a portion of the nation, according to Judge Rodriguez.
The Department of Homeland Security wasn’t interested in responding to the request. If the Trump administration appeals the decision, it would go to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals, considered one of country’s most conservative courts. The case could eventually be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has ruled the Trump administration can remove migrants under the Alien Enemies Act. Migrants alleged to be gang members must be given “reasonable time” to challenge their removal from the country. The court did not specify a length of time.