A guide to all of Trump's new deportation tactics — and the real people affected by them

During the 2024 campaign, President Trump promised to launch an unprecedented mass deportation effort if reelected — a push that, he said, could ultimately affect millions of people who entered the United States illegally. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has issued a number of executive orders meant to expand removals. The most recent came on Monday, with the White House announcing two new orders: one “unleashing[ing] America’s law enforcement to pursue criminals,” and another directing federal agencies to publish a list of so-called sanctuary cities, which do not cooperate with immigration agents.

But Trump’s crackdown has created controversy — and some contradictory effects. Last week, a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old with U.S.



citizenship were deported alongside their mother to Honduras on the same day a 2-year-old girl was sent there “with no meaningful process” and against the wishes of her father, according to a federal judge. Another U.S.

citizen — Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old from New Mexico with learning disabilities — was held for 10 days at an Arizona detention facility after suffering from a seizure . And for months, the saga of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — the 29-year-old Maryland man who was deported to a prison in El Salvador in defiance of a withholding order forbidding his removal — has dominated headlines and consumed the courts. At first, the Trump administration acknowledged in a March 31 court filing that it had mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia; now it’s justifying Abrego Garcia’s removal and insisting that it does not have to comply with various court orders demanding his return to the U.

S. In part as a result of such stories, apprehensions on the U.S.

-Mexico border — which were already falling under former President Joe Biden — have plummeted to their lowest level in decades since Trump took office . But with fewer easy, newly arrived targets, this means Trump is deporting people at a slower pace than Biden was — which may explain why his administration keeps ratcheting up pressure on agents and catching noncriminals in its crosshairs. Here’s a guide to Trump's confusing new deportation tactics — and the real people affected by them.

Removing ‘alien enemies’ What’s changed under Trump: On March 14, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, only the fourth time in U.S. history it had be done — and the first time since World War II.

The Revolutionary Era law allows the government to detain and expel immigrants age 14 or older without a court hearing — but only if they’re “alien enemies” from a country that’s invading or warring with the U.S. So who are we at war with? According to Trump’s recent executive orders, any illegal crossings at the U.

S.-Mexico border now constitute an “invasion,” and any members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, now qualify as alien enemies because they “have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.” Experts have disputed Trump’s interpretation of the law.

Regardless, the administration defied a federal judge’s order and suddenly flew more than 200 Venezuelan migrants to a notorious El Salvadoran prison on March 15. (Noncitizens are almost never deported to a country other than their own.) Ever since, the president has been tussling over his actions with various courts — including the Supreme Court, which ruled on April 7 that anyone subject to the Alien Enemies Act must be given notice and a reasonable amount of time to challenge their removal in a “proper venue.

” In the meantime, Trump administration officials have ordered law enforcement nationwide to pursue suspected gang members into their homes, according to a copy of the directive obtained by USA Today — in some cases without any sort of warrant. How many people have been affected: Hundreds, including Abrego Garcia. One real-life example: Last August, Andry José Hernández Romero — a 31-year-old gay makeup artist from the central Venezuelan town of Capacho — arrived at the U.

S.-Mexico border in San Diego, according to the New Yorker . Hernández Romero had traversed the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap and scheduled an appointment through a U.

S. government app. His goal was to claim asylum.

In Capacho, he had often been followed and harassed by armed vigilantes aligned with Venezuela’s authoritarian regime. Hernández Romero passed his initial screening, demonstrating a “credible fear” of persecution — but officials also found crown tattoos (one for “Mom,” one for “Dad”) on each of his wrists. “The crown has been found to be an identifier for a Tren de Aragua gang member,” they said.

So instead of being released with a future court date like other asylum seekers who passed their screenings, Hernández Romero was detained — for months. A lawyer ultimately scheduled a court appearance in San Diego on March 13, but a few days before Hernández Romero was supposed to appear, ICE transferred him to South Texas. He missed his hearing as a result.

The following day, Hernández Romero called his mother and said he was about to be transferred again. An ICE lawyer later told a judge that he had been “removed to El Salvador.” “How can he be removed to El Salvador,” the judge asked, “if there’s no removal order?” No one has heard from Hernández Romero since.

He has no criminal record; family members and friends insist he is the furthest thing from a gang member. Experts, meanwhile, told the New Yorker that “Tren de Aragua does not use any tattoos as a form of gang identification.” Hernández Romero’s crown tattoos, they added, likely refer to Capacho’s Three Kings Day festival — a theatrical production to which he contributed as an actor, costume designer and makeup stylist.

Revoking parole and temporary protected status What’s changed under Trump: Between October 2022 and January 2023 — as migrants fleeing humanitarian crises surged to the southern border — then-President Joe Biden created a sponsorship program designed to discourage illegal crossings by providing a legal way to enter the U.S. instead.

Under an existing immigration law known as humanitarian parole, migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua would be eligible to live and work here legally for two years if U.S. residents agreed to financially sponsor them.

Hundreds of thousands of these migrants were eventually granted parole. Then, in October 2024, the Biden administration announced that it would not be extending their legal status and urged them to try to obtain legal status through other immigration programs (such as asylum) if they wished to stay. But on March 25 of this year, the Trump administration went a step further, saying it would actually revoke migrants’ work permits and deportation protections starting in late April — at which point they would have to self-deport or face arrest and removal.

Around the same time, the Trump administration announced that it would also be revoking “temporary protected status” (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans as well, claiming that the threat of Tren de Aragua justified the move. (TPS shields foreign nationals who already live in the U.S.

from being sent back to unsafe countries; under Biden, it had been extended to 2026 for Venezuelans who qualified.) Yet so far, the courts have stymied Trump’s efforts. In March a federal judge in San Francisco ruled “there is no evidence that Venezuelan TPS holders are members of the TdA gang, have connections to the gang, and/or commit crimes.

” In fact, the judge continued, “Venezuelan TPS holders have lower rates of criminality than the general population” and “generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes.” A few weeks later, a federal judge in Boston blocked Trump’s plan to terminate parole , writing that “without any case-by-case justification,” it “undermines the rule of law” to revoke the legal status of “noncitizens who have complied with DHS programs and entered the country lawfully.” How many people could be affected: Up to 532,000 migrants who were granted parole; roughly 600,000 Venezeulans with temporary protected status.

One real-life example: Two years ago, “Nickey,” 21, came to the U.S. from Haiti — a country wracked by gang violence — under the humanitarian parole program, according to radio station WBUR .

Without parole "I would probably not be where I am right now," Nickey told the Boston news outlet. "I could have been dead. But here I had the opportunity to grow — away from all this turmoil.

I would say it's a chance in a lifetime." Sponsored by an uncle, she’s now “in her second year of community college, works three jobs and serves as a student trustee on the board at her school,” according to WBUR. But in March, Nickey was informed that her parole would now be expiring in April rather than August — meaning she will either have to leave the U.

S., face deportation or secure new legal status. She applied for asylum and is waiting to hear whether her application can proceed.

“That's the only option that I have because I can't go back to Haiti,” she told WBUR. “Going back to my country right now is just death for me.” Revoking CBP One permits What’s changed under Trump: CBP One, a U.

S. Customs and Border Protection app, debuted during Trump’s first term; back then, it mainly helped visitors extend their short-term visas. But starting in January 2023, the Biden administration expanded CBP One to allow migrants to book appointments at the U.

S.-Mexico border. The idea was they could then plead for legal entry instead of attempting to cross illegally.

The program proved popular, with an average of 280,000 people competing for 1,450 appointment slots each day by the end of 2024. Ultimately, nearly a million people entered the U.S.

(with two-year work permits) through CBP One. Trump suspended CBP One for new arrivals his first day back in office, but people already in the U.S.

believed they could stay at least until their permits expired. Last month, however, many of those same people suddenly started to receive cancellation notices via email. “It is time for you to leave the United States,” the messages began.

Some told recipients to leave immediately; others gave them seven days. In a statement to the Associated Press , Customs and Border Protection confirmed that it had started to terminate temporary legal status under CBP One. How many people could be affected: Up to 936,000 One real-life example: Maria, a 48-year-old Nicaraguan woman, came to Florida via CBP One.

She cheered Trump’s election, according to AP. But she recently received a notice telling her to leave — news that landed like “a bomb.” “It paralyzed me,” she said.

CBP One recipients have a one-year window to file an asylum claim or seek other relief. Maria — who gave only her middle name for fear of being detained and deported — told the AP that she would file for asylum while she continued to support herself by cleaning houses. Others, however, have already left the U.

S., according to AP. “It’s really confusing,” Robyn Barnard, senior director for refugee advocacy at Human Rights First, told the outlet.

“Imagine how people who entered through that process feel when they’re hearing through their different community chats, rumors or screenshots that some friends have received notice and others didn’t.” Terminating student visas/revoking student green cards What’s changed under Trump: During the 2023-24 school year, there were more than 1.1 million international students in the United States, according to a recent report .

Together, they pumped nearly $44 billion into the U.S. economy, generating 378,000 jobs.

The Trump administration has tried to shrink America’s international student population in two ways. First, Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked an obscure provision earlier this year to cancel the student visas of hundreds of noncitizens whose pro-Palestinian activism, in his view, was creating “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” “We are not going to be importing activists,” Rubio said.

“They’re here to study. They’re here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine the — our universities.

I think it’s lunacy to continue to allow that.” (At least two permanent legal residents — Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Madawi, pro-Palestinian activists at Columbia University — are also fighting deportation after the State Department moved to revoke their green cards and arrested them in March and April.) Then came a much larger wave of visa cancellations — one that seemed harder to explain.

“In some cases, students had minor traffic violations or other infractions,” the New York Times reported . “But in other cases, there appeared to be no obvious cause for the revocations.” After students learned that their records had been deleted from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System — a move that stoked panic on campuses nationwide and led some to leave the country — more than 100 lawsuits were filed, according to Politico .

In roughly half of those cases — spanning at least 23 states — judges ordered the administration to temporarily undo its actions, declaring them unlawful. In response, the White House reversed course last Friday, restoring the records it had purged while immigration officials began work on a new system for reviewing and terminating student visas. A senior Department of Homeland Security official told the New York Times that “students whose legal status was restored on Friday could still very well have it terminated in the future, along with their visas.

” How many people have been affected: 1,500 One real-life example: Earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed in New Hampshire on behalf of several foreign students who had their F-1 status revoked with no explanation or due process. According to their lawyers, all of these noncitizens “maintained their student status by making progress toward completing their course of study,” and none engaged “in unauthorized employment” or had “any conviction for a crime of violence for which a sentence of more than one year imprisonment may be imposed.” “The only criminal matters the individual Plaintiffs have encountered are either dismissed non-violent misdemeanor charges or driving without a valid U.

S. driver’s license (but using an international or foreign driver’s license),” the lawsuit continued. Yet suddenly losing their status would lead to “severe financial and academic hardship,” according to the complaint.

“Plaintiff Linkhith Babu Gorrela’s graduation date for his Master’s program is May 20, 2025. Without a valid F-1 student status, he may not obtain his Master’s degree. Nor can he participate in the OPT program after graduation,” the document reads.

“Plaintiff Hangrui Zhang’s only source of income is his research assistantship, which has been cut off in light of the termination of his F-1 student status. Plaintiff Haoyang An will have to abandon his Master’s program despite having already invested $329,196 in his education in the United States. Similarly, Plaintiff Thanuj Kumar Gummadavelli and Plaintiff Manikanta Pasula have only one semester left before they can complete their Master’s degrees and participate in the OPT program.

Their graduation is unpredictable and unlikely unless this Court intervenes.” Cracking down on permanent U.S.

residents (green card holders) for old, minor offenses What’s changed under Trump: About 13 million noncitizens currently have permanent legal status (i.e., possess a green card).

About 9 million of them are eligible to become citizens because they’ve been permanent residents for at least five years, or because they’ve been married to a citizen for at least three years. Not all green card holders pursue citizenship; the application is expensive and the process is bureaucratic. But usually they’re not targeted for deportation unless they commit serious crimes.

Under Trump, however, federal agents have shifted into maximum enforcement mode in order to fulfill the president’s goal of mass deportation — and they have been “detaining permanent U.S. residents convicted of years-old minor offenses and moving to deport them,” according to the New York Times .

How many people have been affected: Unclear One real-life example: Erlin Richards, 43, has had a green card since 1992. He works as an electrician in the New York metro area; according to his lawyer, who spoke to the New York Times , Richards has never spent a day behind bars. Yet now Richards — a native of the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent with three U.

S.-born children — is stuck in an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J.

Why? Because in 2006 — nearly two decades ago — he was convicted in Texas for marijuana possession. After paying a fine, Richards thought he’d put the incident behind him. He traveled to Canada and his home country without any problems.

But last month, upon returning to JFK Airport from a vacation in the Dominican Republic, he was locked up. “Haven’t you been watching the news?” Richards recalled being told. “Trump is president now.

We have to detain you.” Ironically, Richards is now being held “for carrying a substance that is legal in many states, including his home state of New York,” his lawyer told the Times. Detaining and deporting tourists What’s changed under Trump: The law remains the same — if you come from a country (mostly in Europe and Asia) whose citizens are allowed to enter the U.

S. with a 90-day tourist permit instead of a visa, you’re not allowed to work while you’re here. But enforcement of this rule seems to have ramped up dramatically since Trump took office, leading to multiple incidents in which tourists suspected of breaking it have been stopped at U.

S. border crossings and detained for weeks before being forced to fly home at their own expense. Partially as a result, the number of overseas visitors to the U.

S. fell by 11.6% in March compared to the previous year — including a 17.

2% drop in people traveling from western Europe. How many people have been affected: According to the Associated Press , “U.S.

authorities did not respond to a request ...

for figures on how many tourists have recently been held at detention facilities or explain why they weren’t simply denied entry.” One real-life example: On March 18, Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepère, 18 — both German citizens — arrived in Honolulu on a flight from New Zealand. They were celebrating their high-school graduation with an around-the-world backpacking trip.

The plan was to stay in Hawaii for five weeks before proceeding to California and Costa Rica. But Customs and Border Protection officials thought it was suspicious that Pohl and Lepère had only booked accommodations (an Airbnb) for the first two nights of their stay — and things soon escalated when they admitted they occasionally did “small freelance jobs online” for non-U.S.

clients. “Both claimed they were touring California but later admitted they intended to work — something strictly prohibited under U.S.

immigration laws for these visas,” CBP officials told the New York Post . Ultimately, Pohl and Lepère were denied entry and detained overnight — then handcuffed, escorted to the airport and put on a flight back to Germany. But they have subsequently described an experience that made them feel “small and powerless” — and claimed their words were “twisted.

” The transcript “contained sentences we didn’t actually say,” Pohl told the German outlet Ostsee Zeitung . “They twisted it to make it seem as if we admitted that we wanted to work illegally in the U.S.

” As a result, “they made us do a full strip search,” one of the teens elaborated in a now deleted Reddit post . “It was really cold. We had to undress completely, including bra and underwear, and even had to squat and spread.

...

I don’t want to describe it in too much detail, but it was humiliating and scary.” A dinner consisting of “two slices of toast and expired cheese” and a night in a cell with convicted criminals and a moldy mattress followed. “We wanted to travel spontaneously, just like we had done in Thailand and New Zealand,” Pohl told Ostsee Zeitung, explaining why they hadn’t fully booked accommodations in advance.

But what they wound up experiencing, Lepère added, was “like a fever dream.” Targeting ‘homegrown criminals’ What’s changed under Trump: Nothing yet. But Trump has repeatedly signaled his interest in sending U.

S. citizens to prisons in other countries — most recently in conversation with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who is currently accepting “alien enemies” into a notoriously brutal prison there. “We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters,” Trump told reporters earlier this month .

“I’d like to include them.” He added that Attorney General Pam Bondi is "studying the law.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously confirmed that Trump is interested in deporting "heinous, violent criminals" who are U.

S. citizens to El Salvador "if there's a legal pathway to do that." She did not clarify whether he is referring only to naturalized citizens or to any citizen who commits a crime.

Trump is already engaged in “extrajudicial imprisonment by foreign proxy," as David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, put it to NBC News — i.e., the deeply unusual practice of deporting accused gang members without due process to a country where they’ve never lived.

But "U.S. citizens may not be deported to imprisonment abroad,” Bier explained.

“There is no authority for that in any U.S. law.

”.