Trump Uses Inauguration Speech to Pledge Immigration Crackdown on Day One
Noah Sheidlower et al., Insider, January 20, 2025
President Donald Trump said at his inauguration that he will declare a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, ramping up his immense focus on immigration in his second term.
“I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country,” he said during his inaugural speech at the Capitol. “We will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.”
“As Commander in Chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions and that is exactly what I am going to do,” he continued. “We will do it at a level nobody has ever seen before.”
Trump said he’d halt all illegal entry “immediately,” adding that he’d start the process of deporting “criminal aliens” back to their home countries.
He also said he’d reinstate his Remain in Mexico policy and “end the practice of catch and release.”
The Remain in Mexico policy — which was launched in 2019 during Trump’s first term — mandates that migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico pending their immigration court date in the US.
Trump has not yet officially signed his executive orders, but his speech laid the framework for how he’ll proceed on much of his immigration platform.
It was not immediately clear how Trump would advance other immigration-related promises, such as his controversial vow to end birthright citizenship for the children of people living in the country illegally.
Throughout his campaign, Trump argued that deportations could benefit the US economy. He has said that removing large numbers of people in the country illegally could open job opportunities for US-born workers and legal immigrants and could bring housing prices down.
Business Insider has spoken to over a dozen immigration researchers and policy analysts across the political spectrum. While some conservative-leaning researchers said reducing the number of people coming into the US and living in the country illegally, along with large-scale mass deportations, is necessary to protect American safety and could have long-term economic benefits, left- and center-leaning researchers said there may be economic shocks.
The US had an estimated 11.7 million immigrants living in the US illegally as of July 2023, per the most recent numbers from the Center for Migration Studies. As many as 8.3 million people in this demographic work, per CMS estimates.
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