Immigration policy in the second Trump administration: Restriction, removal, and the limits of MAGA nativism

Abstract

Donald Trump's three presidential campaigns have centred on promises to stop unauthorised immigration, whether by ‘building the wall’ or by enacting the largest mass deportation in American history. To deliver on these promises, Trump has appointed Stephen Miller—an anti-immigration hardliner who was responsible for the first Trump administration's draconian border policies – to a key White House position. Trump is often described as breaking from liberal-democratic norms; but when it comes to immigration policy, he is following a well-worn path by hiring Miller. This brief commentary places the Trump/Miller brand of anti-immigration politics in historical context, showing how anxieties over labour competition and racial/cultural integrity have led to selective enforcement and restriction, and to the withholding of rights from certain groups of ‘foreigners’ present on US territory. The next four years will most certainly continue to see tight restrictions on asylum and refugee resettlement, and aggressive detention and removal practices, much of it accomplished through executive order or bureaucratic procedures. Amid this more restrictive environment, debates over the relative worthiness of particular groups of foreigners will continue. Indeed, such debates have already erupted among MAGA loyalists around the issue of H1B visas for skilled workers, which tech oligarchs like Elon Musk support, but many far-right commentators oppose. How such debates unfold will reveal the limits of Trump's nativist-populist agenda.