Straight Out of Project 2025: Trump’s Immigration Plan Was Clear

In the past year, videos of masked agents violently arresting people of color in cities across the U.S. have become a common sight on social media.

The Trump administration promised to dramatically reshape the immigration system when it returned to office. After its first year back, the administration has already significantly altered the system, changing rules related to immigration custody and visas and sowing an intense fear in immigrant communities across the country. 

Though President Donald Trump at one point denied being involved with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which became known as a playbook for what the next conservative administration would do, he ended up hiring many who were involved in its creation to join the administration.

The project features several sections relevant to immigration, the most notable being a chapter written by Ken Cuccinelli on the Department of Homeland Security. Cuccinelli led U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and was acting deputy secretary of the department under the first Trump administration.

By the dawn of 2026, the Trump administration had done much of what Cuccinelli called for. What the federal government hasn’t yet done might give some sense of what’s to come in the new year.

Mandatory Detention

Under Trump, the average daily population in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has increased from less than 38,000 in fiscal 2024 to over 48,000 in fiscal 2025 and nearly 65,000 so far this fiscal year, according to data from the agency.

In Project 2025, Cuccinelli called for mandatory detention of immigrants with pending cases. Though Cuccinelli suggested the change should come from Congress, in the Trump administration, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has issued decisions requiring the detention of most people with cases in immigration court.

At the beginning of the second Trump administration, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency in the Department of Justice that employs immigration judges and the appeals board, fired many of the board members, leaving only those believed to support the administration’s policies, according to Kevin Gregg, an immigration attorney with Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli and Pratt who hosts a podcast that tracks board decisions called Immigration Review.

In May, the board’s decision in Matter of Q. Li restricted who had a right to a bond hearing before a judge to try to get out of immigration custody. In September, Matter of Hurtado placed even more restrictions on the ability to qualify for a bond hearing. 

Since then, immigration judges have found that they now lack jurisdiction to hold bond hearings for many people in custody. Instead, lawyers have had to file writ of habeas corpus petitions in federal court to try to get their clients released.

“Matter of Hurtado is the most horrific and important BIA decision issued ever,” Gregg said. 

“We’re talking millions of people in America right now and in America in the future, millions right now subject to mandatory detention without even the opportunity for bond no matter how good a person they are,” he said. “It’s insane. It’s against American values, and it affects millions of people. It’s a completely disingenuous and dishonest reading of the statute.”

In Project 2025, Cuccinelli said Congress should allocate funds for 100,000 beds in immigration custody and allow for ICE to hold people in tent facilities.

Since Trump returned to office last year, ICE has rapidly expanded its detention capacity using tent facilities, including at Fort Bliss in Texas, where human rights and civil rights organizations have documented substandard and even abusive conditions.

“Literally people are dying in immigration detention who should not be detained,” Gregg said.

At least 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025. The only other year in the agency’s history when in-custody deaths reached the same number was 2004.

Trump closed offices that previously monitored civil rights and investigated complaints in detention centers and in immigration processing, which was recommended in the Project 2025 plan.

The administration’s message to immigrants is clear, Gregg said. The threat of extended time in custody causes people to give up their cases and leave the country. The strategy can also overwhelm attorneys and others who work closely with immigrants, said San Diego immigration attorney Tammy Lin.

Assisting ICE

Cuccinelli called for agencies that do work related to immigration that are currently in the Homeland Security and Justice departments to be combined into a new department and for ICE and Customs and Border Protection to become one entity. 

While that kind of official structural reorganization hasn’t happened, many of those agencies appear to be working more closely with ICE than in the past. Both immigration courts and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are allowing ICE to make arrests in their spaces. At green card interviews, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staff now communicate with ICE officers regarding arrest timing. 

Border Patrol agents under Commander Gregory Bovino are moving from city to city, making mass arrests that are often violent and widely publicized by the administration. That interior arrest work would more typically be done by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations staff.

Even the Internal Revenue Service agreed to share data with ICE last year, a highly controversial decision proposed by Cuccinelli in Project 2025. About a month ago, a federal judge temporarily blocked that data sharing. 

The administration has gotten rid of ICE guidance that limited enforcement at “sensitive locations” including schools, hospitals and places of worship — a move taken straight from the Project 2025 playbook to bolster ICE’s ability to make arrests. A federal court has since blocked officers’ ability to make arrests at places of worship.

The Trump team also brought back a change from the president’s first term that allows immigration officials to deport people who have been in the U.S. for less than two years without first taking them to see a judge if they don’t have visas. Known as expedited removal, the program now operates throughout the country rather than only near the border.

ICE initially used that program last year as a reason to detain people after their court hearings. 

Clogging Visa Processing

In Project 2025, Cuccinelli called for big changes at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for processing immigration status changes and visa requests for people already inside the U.S. 

He said the agency should require more in-person interviews in its processing. Lin, the San Diego immigration attorney, said she’s seen the agency requiring more interviews.

“They are interviewing more people than they need to,” Lin said.

Gregg said he’d also seen an increase in requirements for biometric screenings for people going through the visa process with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, another proposal in the Project 2025 plan.

Many of those changes seem likely to increase the backlog of cases with the agency rather than decrease them, Gregg said. Project 2025 suggested that the agency stop accepting applications altogether if its backlog gets too big.

Fees for visa processing have increased. Kimberley Robidoux, an immigration attorney in San Diego, said a $100,000 application fee for H1B visas — work visas that last a few years — was causing anxiety among many of her clients this year. Fees used to run between $2,000 and $5,000, depending on circumstances.

“That’s been incredibly disruptive,” Robidoux said.

The agency also now requires an annual application fee for asylum seekers. Asylum seekers previously did not pay anything to request protection from persecution.

Undoing Protections

The Trump administration ended temporary protected status for people from several countries: Haiti, Cameroon, Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Ethiopia, Myanmar and South Sudan. The program allows the federal government to grant permission to be in the U.S. to groups of people when their country is experiencing a crisis such as a natural disaster or war, but it does not give green cards or offer a pathway to citizenship. 

The government generally renews that status as long as conditions in the person’s homeland haven’t improved. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended protected status despite ongoing difficult conditions in those countries. Part of her argument was that it was contrary to the “national interest” of the U.S. to allow those temporary protected status holders to remain any longer.

Several court cases have challenged the end of temporary protected status for various nationalities, including one that has twice gone to the Supreme Court, where, using the shadow docket to resolve a matter quickly, the justices have allowed Noem’s decision to stand, taking away immigration status from thousands of people so that they become undocumented.

The administration has also restricted options for people seeking more permanent protection. In addition to charging fees to people with pending asylum applications, the federal government last year also blocked access to requesting asylum for recent border crossers. Project 2025 called for many restrictions on access to asylum as well as eligibility requirements. 

Abandoning Crime Victims

Cuccinelli called for the termination of T and U visas as part of Project 2025. T visas allow victims of human trafficking to come forward and work with police without fear of deportation, and U visas are for victims of other crimes, often domestic violence survivors. 

It would take an act of Congress to get rid of the visas, but the Trump administration has made it more difficult to get approved for such visas, and those waiting for the visas are more likely to be detained or deported.

Shutting Out Students

Project 2025 argued that the U.S. should stop giving visas to students from countries that its authors deemed to be enemies. It also called for denying student loans at universities that enroll undocumented students. 

Immigration officials under the Trump administration have targeted students who have spoken out about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Trump has issued several travel bans, most recently blocking people from more than 30 countries from receiving visas, including student visas. 

Though the Trump administration has pressured universities in many ways, it has not yet tried to restrict their ability to accept undocumented students.

Limiting Seasonal Visas

In Project 2025, Cuccinelli said that the federal government should not issue extra H2B visas, which are for temporary, seasonal workers. Normally, the government has discretion to issue more of these visas than the annual cap. The tourism sector and even county fairs rely heavily on workers with these visas. 

It’s not yet clear whether the Trump administration will add visas for the coming year. The Biden administration added visas for the summer of 2025 in December 2024, according to David Fullmer, a business immigration attorney and partner with WR Immigration’s Los Angeles office.

Fullmer said that the allotted H2B visas normally run out quickly each year.

“These are companies that are trying to follow the rules. They don’t want to hire undocumented people,” Fullmer said. “They want to do it the right way.”

Bringing Back the Public Charge Rule

Under the first Trump administration, the federal government created a rule that expanded the definition of a public charge. The government can deny visas to people it believes are likely to become dependent on government assistance.

That rule was later rescinded by the Biden administration.

The Trump administration proposed a new rule in November that would bring back the expanded definition of a public charge. 

Requiring E-Verify

In Project 2025, Cuccinelli said that the government should require all employers to use e-verify, a tool to determine whether a potential hire has the authorization to work in the U.S.

Currently, certain government contractors are required to use e-verify, and a bill recently proposed in Congress would expand that to all government contractors, according to Robidoux.

She said that she’ll be watching what happens with e-verify closely this year.

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