Organizations on the advisory board of Project 2025, a sprawling plan to provide the incoming Republican presidential administration with po
John Knefel at MMFA:
Organizations on the advisory board of Project 2025, a sprawling plan to provide the incoming Republican presidential administration with policy and staffing recommendations, have responded to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory by promoting extreme approaches to carrying out his promise to deport upward of 10 million undocumented immigrants.
Right-wing think tanks the Center for Immigration Studies, The Claremont Institute, and the Center for Renewing America have all advanced anti-immigrant policies since Trump’s win. Some of their proposals include offering bounties for information on suspected undocumented people, conscripting far-right so-called “constitutional sheriffs” to serve as immigration enforcers, and attempting to make life so miserable for out-of-status immigrants that they flee the country — referred to euphemistically as “self-deportation.”
Trump has already named the two top officials who will be tasked with carrying out his mass deportation plan, and they both have direct connections to Project 2025. Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “border czar,” is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025’s lead organizer. He is also credited as a contributor in Project 2025’s policy book, Mandate for Leadership, which proposes drastic cuts to legal immigration in addition to harsh crackdowns on undocumented people. Homan has promised to “to run the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen.”
Alongside Homan will be Stephen Miller — a top architect of Trump’s Muslim ban and family separation policies — who will serve as deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser in the new Trump administration. Miller and his conservative advocacy organization, America First Legal, attempted to distance themselves from Project 2025 amid growing backlash to the effort, but their fingerprints are all over it. Miller appeared in a Project 2025 promotional video, a top AFL executive authored a chapter in Mandate, and AFL was on the advisory board until it removed itself following public outcry.
Project 2025 partner organizations such as the Center For Immigration Studies, Claremont Institute, and the Center For Renewing America are helping form plans to get Donald Trump’s morally and economically repugnant mass deportation scheme that is set to target the removal of at least 10 million undocumented immigrants.
On President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, he announced an end to the CBP One app, which was expanded under former President Joe
Chloe Simon at MMFA:
On President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, he announced an end to the CBP One app, which was expanded under former President Joe Biden’s administration and was the sole way for migrants to request an asylum-seeking appointment for legal entrance into the U.S. Right-wing media celebrated Trump for ending Biden’s policy, which they claimed let “illegal aliens schedule their illegal immigration,” and praised the incoming president for launching “a crackdown on illegal immigration.”
Trump shut down the CBP One app, which was the sole way for people to legally request asylum in the U.S. under the Biden administration
During his first day back in office on January 20, Trump signed a series of executive orders targeting immigration. He declared a national emergency at the southern border, authorizing military personnel to go there, ordered the reinstatement of his previous “Remain in Mexico” policy, and terminated the CBP One app. [CBS News, 1/21/25]
Since its launch in 2020, the CBP One app had been a tool for the Department of Homeland Security to identify and track asylum-seekers while allowing some to enter the U.S. at legal ports of entry. According to NBC News, the Biden administration implemented the CBP One app “as a way to curb people crossing the southwest border illegally to request asylum.” The American Immigration Council explained: “The app has become the only way that migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum at a port of entry can preschedule appointments for processing and maintain guaranteed asylum eligibility. CBP One also became the only way that Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans seeking to secure travel authorization to obtain parole through special programs for those nationalities can submit their biometric information to CBP.” [NBC News, 1/20/25; American Immigration Council, 6/2/23]
Out of tens of millions of applications submitted through the app from January 2023 to December 2024, just 936,500 applicants were granted an appointment to request asylum. If asylum was granted, the approved person received a two-year permit that gave “eligibility to work.” [CBS News, 2/12/24; CBP, 1/14/25; NBC News, 1/20/25; PBS NewsHour, 1/20/25]
The CBP One app had been notably credited for decreasing illegal entry into the U.S. An August 2024 NBC News piece quoted Texas pastor Abraham Barberi that the app has “contributed to the decline” in illegal entries, suggesting that “now people think, ‘Well, I don’t have to go all the way to the border, I don’t have to cross the river illegally.’” Forbes also noted that immigration analysts have credited “the ability to use the CBP One app” in part with helping “reduce unlawful migration from Haiti,” adding, “If there is no way to enter legally and apply for asylum or obtain work, many people may choose to take their chances by crossing illegally.” According to PBS NewsHour, “Illegal border crossings by Cubans plunged under CBP One from a peak of nearly 35,000 in April 2022 to just 97 in September.” Additionally, PBS reported, “Migrant shelters along Mexico’s border with the U.S. are now occupied primarily by people seeking the online appointments.” [NBC News, 8/9/24; Forbes, 10/25/24; PBS NewsHour, 1/20/25]
The CBP One app served a purpose: a tool for asylum seekers to legally request asylum.
Donald Trump terminated it, and right-wing media celebrate it.
Speaking at a congressional hearing, Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the far-right Center for Immigration Studies, argued that Hai
Hafiz Rashid at TNR:
A Project 2025 adviser was exposed Thursday in a congressional hearing for defending slavery in Haiti.
Mark Krikorian, an adviser for the right-w
ing manifesto, is the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing organization described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group with a history of promoting eugenics. Representative Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat, pointed out that in 2010, Kirkorian wrote an article for the conservative National Review magazine defending French colonization in the country.
“I’ll ask you, Mr. Krikorian, and I know you’re a Project 2025 board member, your recent quote from a few years ago, where you said, quote, ‘Haiti is so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.’ Is that correct, did you say that?” Casar said to Krikorian.
“I’m happy to talk about that all you want,” Krikorian replied. Casar responded by noting Haiti’s history as a French slave plantation until the slaves revolted in 1791, ultimately winning independence in 1804.
“The French colonized Haiti so that slaves would work on plantations. The end of colonization in Haiti was so that the people there would no longer be slaves. So what you’re saying, and I read your quote, and anybody watching this online should go read it—what you’re saying is it would have been good if they’d stayed colonized, which means it would’ve been good if they had stayed enslaved by the French,” Casar said.
Krikorian stumbled in his response, trying to explain that Haiti wasn’t better off for having gained independence earlier.
“They had every right to throw the French out,” Krikorian said. “My point is, they would have been free 30 years later, they would have been in the same situation as—”
“You’re saying you wanted 30 more years of slavery in Haiti,” Casar said.
Anti-immigrant hate group Center For Immigration Studies Executive Director and Project 2025 adviser Mark Krikorian made excuses for slavery in Haiti.
The Trump administration has considered jailing migrant children at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the New York Times reports, in a proposal that apparently “has not gained traction, perhaps because of the optics of housing young people adjacent to terrorism...
Gabe Ortiz at Daily Kos:
The Trump administration has considered jailing migrant children at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the New York Times reports, in a proposal that apparently “has not gained traction, perhaps because of the optics of housing young people adjacent to terrorism suspects.” Sure, because it’s the optics, not the overseas jailing of children escaping violence, that’s the issue here.
Officials discussed the plan earlier this year in their effort to figure out how to jail more people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. Congress set a limit to how many immigrants ICE can detain—over 45,200—but ICE commonly defies Congress, goes beyond that number, and just figures out the money part later. “ICE is currently housing 50,223 migrants,” the New York Times continued, “one of the highest numbers on record.”
Guantánamo, which jailed thousands of asylum-seekers in the past under direction of Attorney General Bill Barr, came up in the discussions as a way for an unleashed ICE to continue boosting its numbers. “While there were no ‘immediate’ plans to house migrant children at Guantánamo Bay, the Defense Department is attempting to identify military bases that might be used for that purpose, a department spokesman, Tom Crosson, said on Monday.”
Trump Plans to Send National Guard to the Mexican Border
Trump Plans to Send National Guard to the Mexican Border
Author: JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS / Source: New York Times WASHINGTON — The White House said Tuesday night that President Trump planned to deploy the National Guard to the southern border to confront what it called a growing threat of illegal immigrants, drugs and crime from Central America after the president for the third consecutive day warned about the looming dangers of unchecked immigration.…
Krikorian: Trump Moves Closer to Becoming ‘Amnesty Don’ Every Day He Doesn’t Fire Javanka
Krikorian: Trump Moves Closer to Becoming ‘Amnesty Don’ Every Day He Doesn’t Fire Javanka
Evan Vucci/Associated Press by Breitbart News10 Sep 20170 10 Sep, 201710 Sep, 2017 Jonathan Easley writes at The Hill that conservatives are worried that Trump’s debt and spending deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi this week could start a pattern of caving to the Democrats, including on the issue of immigration: Trump’s surprise move embarrassed GOP leaders and angered rank-and-file…
