The NPR Politics Podcast - Year In Review: Trump's Immigration Policy

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

As we approach 2026, the NPR Politics Podcast is taking a look back at the year that was in different political areas. Today, we look at how President Trump has reshaped immigration policy during his return to office, and what impacts those changes have had.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo, and White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Hibena Bustillo, and I cover immigration. I'm Deepa Shiverham. I cover the White House. And today on the show, we want to take a look back at President Trump's immigration policy through his first year back in office. He meant, I mean, obviously immigration was a key part of Trump's campaign for a second term. He promised to carry out in his words, the largest mass deportation of immigrants in U.S. But like, let's start there. Is that something he actually accomplished? So data released from the Department of Homeland Security this fall shows that they have deported 605,000 people. That is short of the one million a year goal that Trump did campaign on. However, the number is most definitely not nothing. And to put it in context, during the first Trump administration, total, he deported 1.5 million people. So in just his first year back, he has nearly reached half of that.

Well, let's talk about, like, how this has been carried out, like what immigration enforcement has actually looked like so far. Yeah, how have you both seen the administration carry this out? There's two main ways. The first is a lot of really intense, really almost a militarized approach to what we think of as enforcement or kind of the policing aspect of this. There has been a big effort from the administration to broadly promote their operations through very cinematic military movie visuals. There have been clashes with protesters on the ground and immigration. customs officers. We've seen physical violence with arrests happening in immigration courts and even citizens have gotten caught up in this. The second way is the cutting off of a lot of legal pathways to come into the United States through refugee programming, asylum seeking, and also the delegalization of about 1.6 million people who came in during the Biden administration through some program that now no longer exists.

And then we have seen what immigration lawyers are dubbing like major due process violations. The administration has admitted that it has deported, you know, individuals by mistake. Some of them have been brought back because of that mistake. There is a broader constant clash between the courts, immigration courts, judicial courts, and the administration in terms of this enforcement. I mean, there's so many also like parts of immigration policy that I think are, largely invisible to the public. There are little bits of minutia that happen that, you know, there are these big displays that you might see on cable news, right, of people trying to cross the border wall or like clashes with ice like Jimena was talking about. But there's a lot of other

things that this administration has been doing often very silently. And I think about things like, you know, increasing fees for H-1B visa holders, which of course limits who can come into this country, cutting off refugee admissions except for white South Africans, which was something Trump was very focused on. There was even a whole. whole bit about, you know, limiting the number of student visas for Chinese students in particular, which then the Trump administration kind of flip-flopped on. So there's a lot of other things that are happening in that swirl of immigration policy. And when you think about it, and you really tally it all together, it has been a lot, a lot, a lot of things that are

happening that, quite honestly, it's hard to sort of, you know, pull all together and pay attention to. And even just by the numbers, right, the State Department recently said that it has revoked 85,000 visas of all categories, and that includes more than 8,000 student visas with the agency saying that that's more than double the number of the year before. So, you know, those are forms of enforcement that, as Deepa mentioned, are not what you traditionally think of as what ICE is doing out on the streets. But it means people that had a permission to be in the country no longer do our subject and maybe may have been deported. Yeah. I want to go back. to Deepa's point that a lot of this is sort of done out of the public eye, how much of this is because the president has a lot of leeway over immigration policy and he doesn't have to, you know, get like congressional approval, something that would, you know, result in a sort of public debate about this stuff.

The executive branch has purview over the enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. It has always been that way. That is the one of the biggest privileges of legal enforcement that they have. Many states and local police forces. often defer up and say this is not our problem. This is up to the feds to handle. And then when you look at what Congress has done this year, Republicans in Congress have really endorsed and shown their support for what this administration wants to do. They approved tens of billions of dollars to hire more immigration officers, separate tens of billions of dollars to expand detention space and, you know, pursued other policies that cut legal immigrants from public benefits, which is in line with what the president wants. Yeah. And TIPA, you know, immigration wasn't the only thing that was promised on the campaign trail, but now in his first year of his second term, it has been one of the biggest focuses of the administration.

Why is that? What is the White House's reasoning or explanation for why this has been like one of the key focuses moving forward? Yeah. I mean, this is just to be honest, one of Trump's favorite issues. He's been talking about immigration making immigration policy one of his biggest focuses since he, for for president, like, what, 10 years ago now? So it's one of their favorite things to talk about and lean on, especially when things aren't really going well in other aspects of their policymaking. So if the economy isn't doing really great or the jobs report isn't really good, you might see them, you know, Trump even truthing about immigrants, you know, sort of seemingly out of the blue, but it's his way of trying to pivot and reclaim the new cycle. I think a really good example of that is earlier this year when there was that group chat where a journalist from the Atlantic was

added to this chat with a lot of high-up Trump officials, including the defense secretary. They were talking about a lot of national security plans. And then the next day, you know, obviously it was a really bad day for the White House when that story came out. The next day, Tom Homan, whose Trump's borders are, was on Fox News trying to pivot the conversation back to immigration. So you can really see in that example in so many other spots where that is just the issue that they keep leaning on, you know, talking about immigration and illegal immigration and, you know, a bunch of other things that sort of come along with that, you know, to to Jimenez point and to your question, Ashley, about how much executive power is being honed in on when it comes to making immigration policy, it is such a contrast from the previous administration.

And when you look at how historically Democrats have handled this issue, oftentimes you would hear President Biden or Vice President Harris saying, you know, we want to focus on bipartisan immigration reform, but we're waiting on Congress to pass a bill. We're waiting on Congress to take action. And there was just seemingly politically a lot of hand-wringing. And I just cannot emphasize enough how different that's been in just these, you know, 11 months of a Trump administration. I mean, this is the definition of a whole of government approach on a policy. I cover DHS, but I also cover immigration policy. And that means I'm covering the Justice Department because they have purview over immigration courts where, you know, that determines if someone is deported or not. Who is overseeing that? That means the State Department with many visas. That means, you know, health and human services because they oversee the refugee program and unaccompanied minor programming. That means, you know, USDA, the Department of Agriculture, has gotten involved at one point

because there are many migrant laborers that work in that sector. You know, I think that there really has just been name your agency and they have probably at one point had some sort of enforcement or reaction to what this president is doing or wants them to do. Yeah. Okay, well, let's take a quick break more in a moment. And we're back. And I want to talk to you both about immigration reform and any possible legislation on that front. I mean, is there even an appetite among lawmakers right now or the White House to reform a system that many people agree needs at least some kind of fixing? I mean, the short answer is no. Like, there is no appetite on the hill to move a broader immigration bill forward that would reform programs that would change who.

can access certain visas or certain programming that would provide any pathway to a legal status. That's not to say there aren't fissures. I mean, I've spoken with many Republican members of the Senate and the House that have disagreed with the Trump administration's stance on migrant laborers, on children who came on the deferred action for childhood arrivals program. Most recently, whether or not Afghan immigrants that helped U.S. troops should be allowed to come to the United States. You know, we see some of these splits, but then when you ask them, okay, Congress, like, what's your role here?

What is your power? They'll all concede that there's no appetite right now to move something forward. And that's also just, you know, probably if we did a theme podcast on the entirety of the Trump administration, right? Like that lack of movement from Congress to want to take up these really, really key issues and critical issues I think goes across so many different issues because, This is a Republican-controlled Congress. They have President Trump in the White House who is taking such major executive actions on his own.

It really just kind of underlines that like erosion of Congress's role in the three branches of government here. It erodes the kind of action and the motivation that Congress needs to get anything done when at the end of the day, they don't really have to risk upsetting President Trump. They can just kind of, you know, sort of let the White House take the lead on so many issues, including this one. And, you know, that's also to caveat that some of the most vocal members, and senators are not running next year. The politics of this are actually pretty complicated. I mean, yes, these actions are very popular among the base. But polling has suggested that overall Americans are not happy with the administration's immigration policies and actions.

I mean, what do you make of that particular disconnect? Yeah, I'm actually kind of struggling to sort of put the pieces together on this because to me it sort of feels like immigration is becoming almost like the way we talk about the economy in elections where like people just feel about it as a certain way depending on who the president is maybe. That is just like a deepa hot take. Like I'm just, I'm curious to see more and report more on what we're seeing here because there are a lot of people who are now with Trump in office and with the actions he's taken on immigration unhappy with the way it's being done. They don't like, you know, the way the process is going. They're unhappy with it.

And at the same time, you know, earlier this year, there was this really interesting poll from Gallup that said that there was like a record high number of Americans who were in favor of immigration. And so at the same time, there's just this really interesting, you know, dynamic of shifting perspectives on how the country feels not only about, you know, immigrants' place in America and how they shape America, but then also, you know, how they're being treated politically. I do think that the interesting thing to watch is how that will play a factor in the 26 midterm elections, the 2020 presidential election, right, a little bit too soon to see, but definitely worth noting that, you know, as far as Republicans go, they are still happy with the president's current immigration policy. and of course that bodes well for Republicans going forward. And I think that perspective is so important to keep in mind to deepest point, you know, during the Biden administration, there was an increase of people crossing the southern border.

It was very visual. There were towns that were, you know, needing to grapple with how to take in and accommodate for the number of asylum seekers that were coming through. We had governors, Republican governors, sending busloads and plane loads of these. migrants into other areas and making a really big show of it. You know, it was a very visual thing. Now, the Trump administration's enforcement tactics this year, because there is, you know, a near record low of crossings at the southern border, is in the interior of the country. It's in the middle, which means unless you are physically seeing it or you see it on your social media, you're not seeing the 600,000 people being loaded on planes, being removed from the country, being loaded on buses, being in detention centers that are overcrowded. You don't see that. And so it's going to be really interesting next year what the perception really is.

Because people can say they can be like, we don't support, you know, people that are seeking asylum from getting deported. But they're not seeing it. They are not seeing that in their hometowns. They're not seeing it on cable news. It's just not visual. So who's to say how that polling actually translates to people's opinions of the policy? I think the keyword you use there is perception. Yeah, right? Like people's perception of this issue, not necessarily what is reflected in the numbers or the deportation numbers or the reality of it. Who's losing their visas?

Perception is such a key word here for how this issue gets treated, honestly, in any presidency. Yeah, well, it's something we'll have to look out for in a whole other year. Okay. Well, let's leave it there for now. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Jimenez-Bustio and I cover immigration. I'm Deepa Shibram. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you.