Former President Trump wants unprecedented restrictions on immigration and the border if he's elected in 2024 — such as screening prospective immigrants for "Marxist" ideologies and a naval blockade to target drug smugglers, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: As president, Trump built part of a border wall, began stringent wealth and health tests for prospective immigrants and limited asylum. His 2025 plan would go much further — potentially making it tougher for millions of foreigners to enter or stay in the U.S.
Trump's plan would involve waves of harsh new policies — and dust off old ones that rarely have been enforced, if ever. It would:
- Ramp up ideological screening for people legally applying to come into the country. U.S. law has blocked communists from entering for decades, it just hasn't been enforced. Trump wants to enforce it to reject applicants who are deemed "Marxists."
- Send the Coast Guard and the Navy to form a blockade in the waters off the U.S. and Latin America to stop drug smuggling boats. It would be a significant step up Trump's show of force in 2020, when he sent warships to the Caribbean as a warning to cartels.
- Expand Trump's "Muslim ban" idea to block more people from certain countries from entering the U.S. As president he banned immigration from more than a dozen countries that are mostly Muslim or in Africa; President Biden rescinded that executive order.
- Designate drug cartels as "unlawful enemy combatants" to allow the U.S. military to target them in Mexico. The U.S. has used that designation to justify long-term detentions of 9/11 suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
- Seek to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants. Trump considered this as president, but today's conservative-leaning Supreme Court has given his team more confidence about taking on an inevitable legal fight.
- Extend Texas' controversial floating barriers in the Rio Grande.
- Quickly deport migrant gang members, smugglers and other criminals, using an obscure section of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts.
- Complete his border wall. Trump spent billions to put 452 miles of new fencing along the 1,954-mile southern border. Biden halted the project.
What they're saying: "For those passionate about securing our immigration system... the first 100 days of the Trump administration will be pure bliss — followed by another four years of the most hard-hitting action conceivable," Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Axios. --->READ MORE HERE
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Most of the candidates in this year’s 2024 Republican race for the presidential nomination mirror hard-line immigration policies set by the front-runner, former President Donald Trump.
What were once considered far-right policies are now common talking points among the GOP candidates. That includes support for building a wall along the Southern U.S.-Mexico border and ending birthright citizenship for American-born children of undocumented immigrants — a protection that is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Candidates also have argued for the reinstatement of Title 42, a pandemic-era immigration policy that immediately expelled migrants and barred them from claiming asylum. The policy was ended by the Biden administration earlier this year, but GOP candidates have argued that it should be revived because of the high number of migrants claiming asylum.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seen an increase in encounters with migrants at the U.S. Southern border, according to its data. In fiscal year 2022, there were nearly 2.4 million encounters with migrants, and in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Oct. 1, there were nearly 2.5 million encounters with migrants at the Southern border.
GOP candidates calling for increased border security have also pointed to the opioid crisis and illicit fentanyl that is smuggled into the U.S. More than 150 people die each day from overdoses related to fentanyl, a topic in the most recent GOP presidential debate.
Most fentanyl — about 90% — is seized by border officials at ports of entry, and more than 70% of people smuggling those drugs are U.S. citizens, according to James Mandryck, a CBP official.
Here’s where the Republican presidential candidates stand on U.S. immigration policy: --->READ MORE HERE
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