Former president and GOP nominee Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the infamous Project 2025. But as mounting evidence shows his involvement— or at least prior connection— to the platform, what will one of Trump's major points of focus along the campaign trail— immigration— look like if he wins the White House once again?
Immigration forms a large part of Project 2025, even though at times it doesn't offer detailed plans on how to carry out its goals.
The document includes ideas that have become standard parts of Republican immigration proposals. For instance, it seeks to increase funding for a wall in the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Trump's signature proposals in 2016.
Likewise, it wants to tear up the Flores settlement, which generally prevents the government from detaining children and families indefinitely. It would also reinstate the "Remain in Mexico" policy of forcing non-Mexicans citizens to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases are pending.
In other ways, however, the document seeks to take its anti-immigration agenda, a step further than the Trump administration did the first time around.
The guide says that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials should be directed to take all unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, prior deportation orders, or who have been identified by local policy under 287(g) agreements into custody.
At the same time, it also proposes dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and combining it with other immigration enforcement units in other agencies, creating a much larger and more powerful border policing operation.
Other proposals include eliminating visa categories for crime and human trafficking victims, increasing fees on immigrants, eliminating certain protections for immigrants such as Temporary Protected Status (which Trump tried to do during his first term but was blocked by a court) and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium.
Project 2025 has been described as a "presidential transition project," according to its website. It sets out four main policy aims: restore the family as the centerpiece of American life, dismantle the administrative state, defend the nation's sovereignty and borders, and secure God-given individual rights to live freely.
The far-right document has been described as having a "fascist" agenda by specialists, while the former President's detractors have tried to highlight his connection to it.
The team that created Project 2025's agenda is full of former Trump staff while he occupied the White House, including Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management; immigration advisor Stephen Miller; and Gene Hamilton, who was known in the Trump administration as second only to Miller in his knowledge of immigration policy and fervor to move it in a more restrictionist direction.
Similarly, in a private meeting earlier this summer, secretly recorded and leaked to CNN, Russ Vought— a former Office of Management and Budget head and Project 2025 contributor— noted that Trump was trying to distance himself from the Project "brand," but that he's "in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy."
As per the former President himself, he continues to deny any connection to the project.
"I know nothing about Project 2025," he posted on his social media website, Truth Social. "I have no idea who is behind it."
"I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal," he continued.
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