Exposing Project 2025

Immigration Rights

Project 2025 lays out a cruel and unprecedented plan to detain and deport millions of people living in the US, and deter others seeking refuge from persecution. Former White House aide, Steven Miller, who was chief architect of Trump's border policy, has been credited in the media for the ideas that are regurgitated in Project 2025.

The new plan represents an extreme expansion of anti-immigration policies that, if enacted, will lead to unprecedented suffering and renewed displacement for millions into insecurity and dangerous home countries in conflict, a draconian plan, say immigration critics of Project 2025. It calls for the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.

America's economy will also suffer significant negative impacts, since Project 2025's proposals directly affect workers in several major sectors, including agriculture and construction. The blueprint represents a serious setback for immigrants' rights, and many of the proposed policies are likely to be contested as violations of human rights under current law.

Project 2025's authors openly admit that immigration is a hot-button polarizing political issue that resonates with conservative voters, and admit they plan to exploit fear of immigration to lure voters. Here, immigrants are presented as a threat to Americans, and to America's cities, and to safety and the economy. Immigrants make for an all-purpose enemy, and are pitted against citizens, and linked with crime. Inflammatory rhetoric infuses Project 2025.

Project 2025's blueprint reflects a nativist domestic policy and an isolationist foreign policy. It calls for militarizing enforcement to seal the border, and going after undocumented immigrants in ways not previously allowed by law or policy. Among radical proposals, it calls for abolishing the Department of Homeland Security and merging it with other agencies now tasked with border control activities into a giant, umbrella law enforcement agency, the third-largest in government, with Cabinet-level status. (pg. 89) It would redirect money from the military budget to border enforcement.

Enforcement

Revise existing law to allow mass detention: The authors propose passing new federal rules that will overrule individual states: "A single nationwide detention standard should be codified that prevents individual states from mandating that federal government agencies adhere to widely expansive and ever-changing sets of standards. Such standards should allow the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents." (pg. 140)

Set up 100,000 new beds for detainees: "Congress should mandate and fund additional bed space for alien detainees. ICE should be funded for a significant increase in detention space, raising the daily available number of beds to 100,000." (pg. 143)

Militarize the border: The authors propose using the Department of Defense (the Army, National Guard, etc.) to help civil authorities with "domestic emergencies" and "law enforcement support." (pg. 107)

Expedite detentions and deportations – without warrants: "ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) should be identified as being primarily responsible for enforcing civil immigration regulations, including the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrant where appropriate...." (pg. 142)

Create a new authority to "expel illegal aliens across the border immediately when certain non- health conditions are met, such as loss of operational control of the border." (pg. 147)

Direct Congress to fund 20,000 Expedited Removal Officers (ERO) and 5,000 attorneys at the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA). (pg. 143)