THE WASHINGTON POST: Donald Trump reveals citizenship crackdown, border strengthening as he returns to office

The US government will no longer recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States to immigrants who lack legal status, one of 10 immigration-related executive orders President Donald Trump plans to sign Monday, an administration official told reporters.

The official did not provide details on how the administration planned to implement a change that scholars say would be illegal and quickly challenged. Trump’s order would reinterpret the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants citizenship to all people born on US soil, and exclude babies born to parents illegally in the country. The changes would apply to future births, the official said.

Trump will issue other executive orders that will ramp up deportations, restart border wall construction and send US troops to patrol the 2,000-mile boundary with Mexico, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration for a call with reporters.

After Trump is inaugurated, he plans to declare a national emergency at the southern border. Trump will then issue orders to restart the “Remain in Mexico” policy of his first term, designate drug cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organisations and suspend refugee resettlement in the United States for at least four months, officials said, reading a list of Inauguration Day actions and orders.

The Trump transition team official who spoke with reporters said the new administration also plans to “end asylum” and quickly deport anyone who crosses the border illegally, work more expansively with state and local law enforcement to detain and deport migrants, and seek the death penalty for any undocumented immigrant who commits a capital crime.

“The last four years have created an unconscionable risk to public safety, public health and the national security of the United States due to the Biden administration’s border policies,” said the White House official, reading from a statement.

“It’s our duty to the American people to get control of the untenable situation we inherited,” said the official.

Illegal crossings along the US-Mexico border have fallen sharply over the past year and are at levels below the final months of Trump’s first term, according to the latest US government data.

Trump’s rapid-fire decrees have been crafted to immediately put immigration advocates and other opponents on their heels, his aides say. They view his November win as a mandate to order sweeping changes to the US immigration system and said the record influx of unlawful crossings in the first three years of the Biden administration demands bold action.

Trump officials provided few details Monday about how the new policies would correspond with existing federal law, international treaties and ongoing federal litigation. An official also declined to specify when US troops would be sent to the southern border, how many will be involved and the rules of engagement for possible military activity against foreign drug cartels. The official said those details would be worked out by the secretaries of defence and state.

The move to end birthright citizenship fulfils a goal long held by conservative groups that say too many migrants are crossing into the United States illegally to have US citizen children. Trump’s order would potentially stop the State Department from issuing passports and direct the Social Security Administration to no longer recognise the babies as US citizens, but the official did not go into detail about the practical implications of Trump’s order.

It is unclear how many US-born children of undocumented immigrants are in the United States or born each year. About 4.4 million US-born children under 18 were living with an undocumented parent in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center, a think tank. At least 1.4 million adults have parents who are undocumented.

President Joe Biden issued more executive orders related to immigration than any other topic when he took office four years ago - directives aimed at reversing many of the same policies Trump is putting back in place.

Illegal border crossings soared to record levels during Biden’s first three years in office, averaging 2 million per year. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security spent much of Biden’s term trying to subdue an influx of migrants arriving from across the globe.

Biden’s team eventually devised a system of incentives and deterrents to encourage more migrants to seek to enter the United States legally by expanding what it called “lawful pathways” to the United States. The policies relied on an executive authority known as “parole” that allowed tens of thousands to apply to live and work in the United States legally.

Biden officials paired those measures with the harshest crackdown along the border by any Democratic administration in memory. They worked with Mexican authorities to arrest migrants travelling north to the US border, and they issued rules essentially barring access to the US immigration system for anyone who entered illegally.

Those policies have produced dramatic results in the final year of Biden’s term. Illegal crossings at the US-Mexico dropped more than 80 percent in 2024. Over the past few weeks, the number of migrants taken into custody along the US-Mexico border has fallen to roughly 1,000 per day, a level far lower than when Trump left office four years ago.

The latest US Customs and Border Protection data show more migrants seek to enter at official US border crossings, known as ports of entry, than the number of apprehended by Border Patrol after crossing illegally.

Among those seeking lawful entry are the roughly 1,450 people per day using the CBP One mobile app to schedule an appointment to make a humanitarian claim. Trump officials did not say what will happen to those people who have pending appointments.

Trump officials have been preparing to launch a large operation in the Chicago area involving hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to two federal officials and a former official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal law-enforcement planning. Tom Homan, whom Trump has designated his “border czar,” told The Washington Post in an interview Saturday the administration was reconsidering its plans because leaked details put officers at greater risk.

Trump aides said the president’s mass deportation campaign would unfold nationwide, targeting immigrants with criminal records and suspected gang ties. Both categories have long been ICE’s top priorities, but the officials said Trump’s orders will once more give officers broad discretion to arrest anyone living in the United States illegally.

Trump pledged to immediately deport millions of immigrants when he took office in 2017, but he didn’t come close to that goal. ICE carried out 271,000 deportations during the 2024 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the highest total in a decade.

Homan has told Republican lawmakers that ICE will need a major budget boost to pay for Trump’s deportation plan. ICE has funding to pay for about 40,000 detainees per day, but holding capacity would be further strained if Congress passes new laws as soon as this week that will direct the agency to jail any immigrant convicted or charged with shoplifting and theft.

ICE officials have identified more than 110,000 immigrants they would be required to take into custody under those mandates.

Trump created Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), known as Remain in Mexico, in January 2019 amid a surge of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border without permission, crowding border jails and thwarting his promises to limit migration.

The next year, migration plunged amid the global pandemic, though Republican lawmakers have frequently credited MPP for regaining control over the southern border. Biden considered the program inhumane and suspended it on his first day in office but Republicans fought in court to reinstate it, though their efforts failed once Mexico refused to take people back.

The Department of Homeland Security said the Biden administration had not enrolled any new border-crossers in the program since August 2022 and it gradually admitted those who were awaiting their hearings into the United States.

The program marked the first time that Mexico had agreed to allow the United States to send non-Mexicans back into their country after they crossed through the US border illegally. However, advocates for immigrants protested, saying the program endangered thousands of migrants by sending them into border cities where they lacked contacts and protection, leaving them vulnerable to extortion, kidnappings for ransom and other violence.

Mexican officials said in 2023 that the Trump administration had dispatched approximately 74,000 people into MPP, which they said was equal to 5.14 per cent of the total apprehensions recorded on the border between Mexico and the United States.

On Feb. 6, 2023, weeks after a federal judge in Texas ordered the Biden administration to restart MPP, Mexico ended the debate by announcing that it would no longer participate in the program.

“Regarding the possible implementation of this policy for the third time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Government of Mexico, expresses its rejection of the US government’s intention to return individuals processed under the program to Mexico,” the ministry said in a statement.

(c) 2025 , The Washington Post