The Trump administration claims its immigration crackdown targets criminals and bad actors, but the reality tells a different story: across every category of legal status, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are systematically stripping people of their status and protections. They’re trying to revoke citizenship from naturalized Americans, dismantle TPS, sabotage DACA, and freeze green card and visa applications.
The pattern is unmistakable: strip legal status first, then arrest, detain, and deport. This delegalization is a deliberate campaign to make people deportable, which is already devastating millions of families, entire communities, and the American economy.
Here’s what the record shows:
Citizenship Is Being Revoked
- The Justice Department has identified 384 foreign-born Americans whose citizenship it wants to revoke – describing them as only “the first wave.” It has ordered DHS to refer up to 200 denaturalization cases per month to the DOJ. Officials are now “pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history.”
- After a routine traffic stop, ICE agents detained and deported Brian José Morales García, a 25-year-old U.S.-born citizen who couldn’t produce his documents on the spot. He was removed to Mexico within days.
- A ProPublica investigation found immigration agents detained more than 170 U.S. citizens in the first nine months of Trump’s second term.
Legal Status Stripped From TPS Holders
- Nearly 1.3 million people live in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status, contributing $29 billion in annual spending power. Under Trump, TPS has ended for roughly 1 million people, and the Supreme Court is now deciding whether to uphold the termination for 350,000 Haitian TPS holders.
- Nearly 190,000 Haitian TPS holders work as nurses, housekeepers, and elder care aides. Senior care facilities could lose critical staff overnight if Haitians lose their protected status.
- The State Department issued a “do not travel” advisory warning Americans to stay away from Haiti due to gang violence and political instability, yet DHS argues that Haiti no longer meets the conditions for TPS designation.
- In Long Island, New York alone for example, 56,000 people hold TPS. ICE enforcement in the region has increasingly targeted people whose legal status was abruptly stripped away by Trump’s policy changes.
Dreamers Under Attack
- Since Trump returned to office, his administration has arrested at least 261 DACA recipients, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- The Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedent ruling that active DACA status alone is insufficient to block deportation – directly contradicting federal court rulings that upheld DACA’s protections as lawful.
- Jose Contreras Diaz, 30, had valid DACA status and no criminal record when ICE arrested him at a routine check-in and deported him to Honduras, where he missed the birth of his son. His deportation was later reversed, but ICE detained him immediately upon his return to the U.S.
- As of February, USCIS’s median DACA renewal processing time hit 2.3 months – the longest since 2016. Karina Valtierra, a Wichita teacher who has renewed her DACA every two years for 15 years, submitted her renewal more than 140 days early – and still lost her job, work permit, and driver’s license when her status expired.
Legal Immigration Processing Is Stalled
- The Trump administration has frozen visa, green card, work permit, and citizenship applications for people born in 39 countries, stranding hundreds of thousands who are already living and working legally in the U.S.
- Denial rates for high-skilled immigrants have nearly doubled: denials for “extraordinary ability” green cards rose from 25.6% to 46.6%, the rejection rate for EB-2 national interest green cards jumped from 38.8% to 64.3%.
- A Cato Institute analysis found total green card approvals were cut in half under Trump – and for Cubans, the collapse is nearly total: approvals fell 99.8% since December 2024, while ICE arrests of Cubans surged 463%. Green card approvals for refugees collapsed by 99%.
- The freeze has destroyed careers: A cancer researcher in Ohio from Myanmar lost her promotion track after her work authorization was paused, and a Nigerian medical school graduate who matched to a surgery residency in Oregon can’t start because her work permit is frozen.
- Hundreds of foreign doctors who finished their U.S. training and committed to practicing in underserved communities for three years can’t begin work because the Trump administration has stalled their J-1 waiver applications since last fall. Now, they’re facing deportation, and their rural hospitals can’t afford the new $100,000 H-1B fee needed to keep them.
The bottom line: The pattern and motivation are clear. Stephen Miller and the Trump administration are executing a coordinated three-step campaign to strip legal status and protections, arrest and detain in massive detention centers, and finally deport. Congress must act immediately to stop this intentional effort to delegalize people and put them in a path to mass deportation.
