President-elect Donald Trump will face many challenges as he returns to the White House to end his predecessor’s policies, but one of his top priorities is closing the southern border and reversing the crisis. illegal immigration.

To do this, Trump plans to strengthen border patrols, fight sanctuary cities, complete his wall and fight cartels to end the immigration crisis, consistent with campaign promises, groups’ policy documents allies and former officials.

Mark Morgan, who served as acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the first Trump administration and also served under the Obama administration, said the new leadership would take steps to reinstate revoked policies by President Biden and strengthen immigration and customs enforcement. begin deporting illegal aliens, marking a return to “common sense policies.”

Morgan told theJust the news, no noise» A TV broadcast shows that Trump will use the existing statutory powers of immigration enforcement agencies and “inject what I call a government-wide steroid injection” to increase the scale of law enforcement.

Trump should prioritize completing his iconic border wall. This will be followed closely by his commitment to implementing the “largest deportation program” in American history as well as efforts to combat the power of Mexican drug cartels.

Morgan also said a key part of resolving the crisis would be cracking down on sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE, a policy that has hampered Trump’s past deportation efforts. “We need to free up state and local law enforcement to actually help ICE identify criminals in their cities in order to deport them,” Morgan said.

“I think that’s where they’re going to look at where they can actually withhold funding and put a maximum pressure campaign on these sanctuary cities,” he continued.

Trump has consistently taken a tough approach to border security during his political career, choosing the issue as one of the centerpieces of his first presidential campaign in 2016. The issue has been widely cited as a major factor in the both in his rise and in the success of his campaign against Hillary. Clinton.

Trump promised during the 2024 campaign that he would complete the southern border wall and strengthen border patrols.

“We will complete the border wall, shift much of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement, and use cutting-edge technology to monitor and secure the border,” the Republican Party platformdesigned by Trump and his allies, promises.

Overview of steps

Key proposals were also presented by the America First Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank made up of former Trump administration officials and loyalists, including former Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, who spent four years developing plans for Trump’s return to the White House.

In a policy documentThe institute outlined steps a future Trump administration could take to resolve the crisis, including proposals to use the military to fight drug cartels and to complete the wall.

During a visit to the border in October on the campaign trail, Trump unveiled a plan to expand the U.S. border patrol in 10,000 agents and give raises to current employees and bounties in an effort to bolster the agency’s ability to confront and stop migrants at the border and restore morale that Trump said was lost during the Biden era. He said he would ask Congress to act immediately on the proposal.

“They are suffering from a huge shortage because they have not been treated properly. They want to do their job. You know, they consider it bad treatment to not be allowed to do your job,” Trump said.

“Wage war on the cartels”

After securing the border, Trump plans to take on the fight against drug cartels that dominate cross-border human and drug trafficking. They are one of the main culprits behind the volume of illegal immigration and also the increase in drug overdose deaths, particularly fentanyl.

“The drug cartels are waging war on America – and now is the time for America to wage war on the cartels,” Trump said on the campaign trail.

The Trump campaign promised to deploy military resourcesincluding special forces and other means, to “inflict maximum damage on the cartel’s leadership, infrastructure and operations.” In addition to labeling the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, Trump also promised that he would work with other governments to completely dismantle the cartels, which have a strong presence throughout Mexico.

Deportation resonates with voters

On the domestic front, Trump plans to stage the largest deportation operation in history to remove illegal aliens from the country, citing the precedent of President Eisenhower’s Operation Wetbackthe largest expulsion of undocumented workers from the United States in a tactical operation carried out by Border Patrol in cooperation with the Mexican government.

Trump promised during the election campaign that this expulsion would break this record. “On day one, I will launch the largest criminal deportation program in American history,” Trump promised at a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania. “We’ll get them out.”

“Dwight Eisenhower has the record” when it comes to expulsions, Trump continued. “He was a very moderate guy who (was) a good general (and) a good president…did a good job, but he hated the concept.” of people flooding into our country, and he holds the record, but unfortunately we’re going to break the records, that’s not something I want to do.

“Build the wall and make Mexico pay” became one of then-candidate Trump’s most popular refrains, although construction will remain incomplete when he leaves office in 2021. Several unfinished sections remain on the southern border, a testimony to the will of the Biden administration. rapid efforts to reverse all of Trump’s immigration policies, chief among them being to stop construction.

Trump promised during the election campaign that he would restore policies from his first term that were dumped by President Biden on day oneincluding the “Remain in Mexico” policy that took pressure off immigration agents trying to process asylum requests, overwhelming the current system.

Biden also reversed Trump’s travel ban — plans for which were actually drawn up by his predecessor Barack Obama’s administration — on some unrest-plagued Middle East and North African countries and to terrorist groups. Biden also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to rescind a Trump-era executive order that ordered strict immigration enforcement.

These policy reversals, Biden’s critics say, triggered the largest border crisis in American history. Since January 2021, the date of President Biden’s inauguration, there have been 10 million encounters with migrantsincluding 80% on the southern border.

These staggering numbers have become a real burden for Democrats and especially for Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden as the party’s nominee. Toward the beginning of Biden’s term, Harris was tasked with addressing the “root causes” of the immigration crisis, for which she was colloquially referred to by pro-Biden media as the “contingency czar.” borders”.

Too little, too late

Shortly before the elections, Biden signed a decree to quell the flow of illegal immigrants to the southern border, as Democrats began to realize it was a political liability. Critics said it was only a stopgap measure to improve his election chances. The order promised to address the overwhelmed asylum system by closing the border after encounters reached a threshold of 2,500 per day over a seven-day period.

At the time, Biden was still a candidate and his border approval rating stood at an abysmal 33.4%.

Harris was chosen to replace Biden at the top of the ticket. Yet when she ran against Trump, Harris consistently received lower marks than her opponent on immigration. Exit polls suggest this was a handicap for her. THE Associated Press Exit polls showed that this issue may have played a decisive role in the election, particularly in key battlegrounds in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which were won by Trump.

For Arizona Rep.-elect Abe Hamadeh, Trump’s call for better immigration enforcement comes as no surprise.

“We cannot continue to live with 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants crossing our southern border,” Hamadeh told the TV show “Just the News, No Noise.” “So if you look at it, it’s no surprise to me that President Trump won overwhelmingly and won the popular vote, the electoral college and United Arab Americans, Latino Americans, Black Americans. It was the largest coalition ever created.

“And it is because all these issues that we constantly talk about in the country, that the electoral campaign resonates with the population,” he added.

Exit polls found that support for Trump’s deportation plans reached 40% of voters, up from the last election in 2020. Immigration was cited as the most important issue for voters. Trump voters, according to a CNN exit poll. Immigration is also classified among the fifth highest problem in a Pew Research pre-election poll, with more than 70% of respondents rating the issue as extremely or very important.