Year In Review: Trump's Immigration Policy

Summary

The NPR Politics Podcast

Episode: "Year In Review: Trump's Immigration Policy"

Date: December 29, 2025
Hosts/Reporters: Ashley Lopez, Jimena Bustio, Deepa Shivaram

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Episode Overview

This episode of The NPR Politics Podcast offers a comprehensive review of President Trump’s immigration policy during his first year back in office (2025). The discussion examines the administration’s efforts toward mass deportation, militarized enforcement tactics, changes to legal immigration pathways, the role of executive power, Congressional dynamics, and how these evolving policies are received by both politicians and the public.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Assessing Success on Mass Deportation Promises

• Trump's Campaign Promise: President Trump pledged to launch "the largest mass deportation of immigrants in US History."
• First-Year Results:
  • Jimena Bustio: “Data released from the Department of Homeland Security this fall shows that they have deported 605,000 people. That is short of the 1 million a year goal that Trump did campaign on. However, the number is most definitely not nothing.” (00:52)
  • For context, Trump deported 1.5 million people in his first administration (2017-2021).

2. How Enforcement Has Been Carried Out

• Militarized Approach & Public Displays:

  • Visible, intense, almost "cinematic" actions with clashes involving protesters and ICE.
  • Jimena Bustio: "The administration has admitted that it has deported, you know, individuals by mistake. Some of them have been brought back because of that mistake." (02:31)

• Clamping Down on Legal Pathways:

  • Abruptly ended programs from previous admin, “delegalizing” 1.6 million people.
  • Reports of “major due process violations,” including mistaken deportations.

• Operations Beyond the Spotlight:

  • Many enforcement actions aren't publicly visible—e.g., revoking various visa categories, increasing fees, and targeting specific demographics.
  • Deepa Shivaram: “There are these big displays you might see on cable news … but there’s a lot of other things that this administration has been doing, often very silently.” (03:05)
  • Visa revocations: Over 85,000 from all categories, including more than 8,000 student visas—“more than double the number of the year before.” (04:00)

3. Executive Power & Congressional Dynamics

• Executive Leeway:
  • Immigration enforcement is largely under executive control, with many states/localities deferring to the federal government.
  • Jimena Bustio: “The executive branch has purview over the enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. It has always been that way.” (04:49)
• Congressional Action:
  • Congress, especially with Republican control, has mostly endorsed these actions—allocating funds for more officers and expanding detention, but not pursuing reform.
  • Jimena Bustio: “They approved tens of billions of dollars to hire more immigration officers… which is in line with what the president wants.” (04:49)

4. The White House Perspective

• Political Strategy and Focus:

  • Immigration remains one of Trump’s signature issues—used to pivot conversation and energize his base.
  • Deepa Shivaram: “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 first ran for President like what, ten years ago now?” (05:55)
  • Executive action now substitutes for comprehensive legislative reform, a sharp contrast with the previous administration's approach.

• Whole-of-Government Stakes:

  • Nearly all federal agencies have been tapped, from the Justice Department (immigration courts), State Department (visas), Health and Human Services (refugees/unaccompanied minors), to even the Department of Agriculture (migrant labor).
  • Jimena Bustio: “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.” (07:33)

5. Prospects for Immigration Reform

• Legislative Inaction:

  • No significant appetite exists in Congress to address comprehensive reform or legal status changes.
  • Jimena Bustio: “There is no appetite on the Hill to move a broader immigration bill forward.” (10:07)
  • Some intra-party disagreements exist, but none strong enough to budge the needle on legislation.

• Congressional Deference and Institutional Consequences:

  • Deepa Shivaram: “That lack of movement from Congress … just kind of underlines that, like, erosion of Congress's role in the three branches of government here.” (11:03)
  • Congress’s inaction has essentially ceded more policymaking power to the executive branch.

6. Politics, Perception, and the Public

• A Complicated Political Picture:
  • While hardline policies are popular with the Republican base, polls show broader public dissatisfaction.
  • Ashley Lopez: “Polling has suggested that overall, Americans are not happy with the administration's immigration policies and actions.” (11:51)
• Meaning of "Perception":
  • Actual enforcement happens out of public view now (e.g., fewer border scenes), so attitudes may be shaped more by “perception” than by visible evidence.
  • Deepa Shivaram: “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.” (12:04)
• Visibility Shift:
  • Under Biden, border crossings were more visible (towns accommodating new arrivals, governors sending busloads of migrants).
  • Under Trump, enforcement “is in the interior of the country … 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.” (13:17, Jimena Bustio)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

"Data released from the Department of Homeland Security this fall shows that they have deported 605,000 people. That is short of the 1 million a year goal that Trump did campaign on. However, the number is most definitely not nothing." — Jimena Bustio (00:52)

"There's a lot of other things that this administration has been doing, often very silently, and I think about things like … increasing fees for H1B visa holders … cutting off refugee admissions, except for white South Africans … limiting the number of student visas for Chinese students in particular." — Deepa Shivaram (03:05)

“The administration has admitted that it has deported, you know, individuals by mistake. Some of them have been brought back because of that mistake.” — Jimena Bustio (02:31)

"This is just to be honest, one of Trump's favorite issues. ...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 ... it's his way of trying to pivot and reclaim the news cycle." — Deepa Shivaram (05:55)

"This is the definition of a whole of government approach on a policy. ...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." — Jimena Bustio (07:33)

"That lack of movement from Congress … just kind of underlines that, like, erosion of Congress's role in the three branches of government here." — Deepa Shivaram (11:03)

"Perception is such a key word here for how this issue gets treated honestly, in any presidency." — Deepa Shivaram (14:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening & Major Promise:
  Discussion of Trump's mass deportation pledge and first-year numbers (00:30–01:30)
• How Enforcement Has Played Out:
  Tactics, legal vs illegal, mistakes, civil rights implications (01:36–03:05)
• Silent Policy Changes:
  Hidden levers like visa revocations, fee hikes, selective admissions (03:05–04:34)
• Executive Power and Congressional Attitudes:
  The president’s unilateral ability; Congress’s inaction (04:34–05:55)
• Why Immigration is the Focus:
  The White House’s strategic use of immigration as a political tool (05:55–07:33)
• Whole-of-Government Effects:
  Multiple agencies’ roles in enforcement (07:33–08:26)
• Legislative & Reform Prospects:
  Prospects for comprehensive immigration reform (09:52–11:45)
• Politics & Public Perception:
  Disconnect between policy, polling, and what’s visible to the public (11:51–14:57)

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Conclusion

Through illuminating data and sharp analysis, the NPR Politics team underscores that while Trump’s deportation numbers haven’t reached his campaign promises, his administration has transformed nearly every aspect of the immigration system using executive power. With Congress ceding most initiative and public awareness shaped largely by perception rather than visibility, Trump’s immigration policies remain a defining—and deeply contested—feature of his second term.

Hosts: Ashley Lopez, Jimena Bustio, Deepa Shivaram
Approximate Episode Runtime: 15 minutes

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Transcript

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[Ashley Lopez]

Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.

[Jimena Bustio]

I'm Hibana Bustio, and I cover immigration.

[Deepa Shivaram]

I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.

[Ashley Lopez]

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. 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 US History. But, like, let's start there. Is that something he actually accomplished?

[Jimena Bustio]

So data released from the Department of Homeland Security this fall shows that they have deported 605,000 people. That is short of the 1 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.

[Ashley Lopez]

Well, let's talk about how this has been carried out, like what immigration enforcement has actually looked like so far.

[Jimena Bustio]

Yeah.

[Ashley Lopez]

How have you both seen the administration carry this out?

[Jimena Bustio]

There's two main ways. The first is a lot of really intense, really almost 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, you know, protesters on the ground and Immigration and 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, 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.

[Deepa Shivaram]

I mean, there's so many also, like, parts of immigration policy that I think are largely invisible to the public. They're Little bits of minutiae 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' 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 H1B 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 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, when 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 pull all together and pay attention to.

[Jimena Bustio]

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 on the streets, but it means people that had a permission to be in the country no longer do, are subject and maybe may have been deported.

[Deepa Shivaram]

Yeah.

[Ashley Lopez]

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.

[Jimena Bustio]

The executive branch has purview over the enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. It has always been that way. That is 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 space, and pursued other policies that cut legal immigrants from public benefits, which is in line with what the president wants.

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Yeah.

[Ashley Lopez]

And Deepa, 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 one of the key focuses moving forward?

[Deepa Shivaram]

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 first ran 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 news 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, who's 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 a bunch of other things that sort of come along with that. 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, we wanna 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 different that's been in just these 11 months of a Trump administration.

[Jimena Bustio]

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 that determines if someone is deported or not, who is overseeing that. That means the state department with many visas. That means Health and Human Services because they oversee the refugee program, 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.

[Deepa Shivaram]

Yeah.

[Ashley Lopez]

Okay. Well, let's take a quick break. More in a moment.

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[Ashley Lopez]

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?

[Jimena Bustio]

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 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 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, 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.

[Deepa Shivaram]

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 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.

[Jimena Bustio]

And, you know, that's also to caveat that some of the most vocal members and senators are not running next year.

[Ashley Lopez]

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?

[Deepa Shivaram]

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 interesting thing to watch is how that will play a factor in the 2026 midterm elections, the 2028 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.

[Jimena Bustio]

And I think that perspective is so important to keep in mind. To Deepa's 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 grapp 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 planeloads 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 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 gonna be really interesting next year what the perception really is, because people can say they can be like, we don't support 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?

[Deepa Shivaram]

I think the key word 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.

[Ashley Lopez]

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 come cover politics.

[Jimena Bustio]

I'm Jimena Bustiu, and I cover immigration.

[Deepa Shivaram]

I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.

[Ashley Lopez]

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

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