Trump’s plans for a second term were well-publicized prior to his inauguration in January, despite the blowback they received from Democrats, and most of the changes he made were implemented on Day One.

A look back at the Obama administration’s immigration policies revealed that former President Barack Obama also pushed the limits of his authority, going beyond the law in ways that frightened Republicans, including going around Congress to impose a new immigration program for those brought to the United States illegally as children.

So are Trump’s actions to deport more illegal immigrants than any predecessor and secure the Southern border a significant enough cause for concern, or have Democrats forgotten how far the laws were pushed 15 years ago? A senior Trump administration official suggested the latter.

“Of course, there is a double standard. When Obama and Biden refused to enforce the law, activists in the media and judiciary alike said nothing,” a senior DHS official wrote in an email. “But when President Trump merely enforces the laws enacted by Congress, they seek to obstruct him at every turn.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said Trump’s “overreach,” “violence,” and “cruelty” were all on display through his immigration enforcement actions, sending federal police after illegal immigrants. All of this, Jayapal said, was happening “despite whatever their status is.”

“I really do think that Trump has gone way overboard,” Jayapal told MSNBC host Chris Hayes this week.

They are openly admitting to still wanting to prevent Trump from deporting enough illegals so they can effectively grant amnesty to enough of them to cement single-party control. pic.twitter.com/l7isQeDZ7b

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) November 7, 2025

In a well-known Supreme Court case in 2012, the then-red state of Arizona attempted to impose its own immigration protocols, which Obama’s Department of Justice challenged on the basis that only the federal government, specifically only Congress, could set immigration levels and enforce the existing federal laws.

Obama said only Washington, D.C., had the authority to make laws, and he became frustrated with Congress’s failure to pass immigration reform in 2013 and moved on his own to create a program to protect hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in the country from deportation.

Republicans accused Obama of going around the very standard that he had touted as his basis for the DOJ challenge against Arizona in 2012.

At the request of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Department of Homeland Security in 2017 announced it would begin winding down Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program over the course of six months on the basis that DACA “was effectuated by the previous administration through executive action, without proper statutory authority and with no established end-date, after Congress’ repeated rejection of proposed legislation that would have accomplished a similar result.”

DHS said it implored Congress to create a legislative solution to the executive branch-created program because only the legislative branch has the power to determine immigration admittance policies.

While Trump signed a dozen executive actions on immigration in January, he has not signed any changes into law.

However, the American Immigration Council, an organization that advocates of expanding immigration, stated in a six-month evaluation of Trump’s second term that he had brought about the “most significant changes to U.S. immigration policy in the nation’s history.”

“Taken one by one, as they have been announced or revealed, the effect can be overwhelming: it seems impossible to even comprehend everything that has happened, much less to understand it in a systematic way or to anticipate what might come next,” the AIC stated in an analysis.

Trump has surged federal agents and officers from across the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 6,500 deportation officers with arresting and deporting 1 million illegal immigrants in his first year.

The “whole of government approach,” as the DHS has repeatedly referenced the collective effort, has infuriated Democrats for how aggressively it is cracking down on illegal immigration.

But it is not so much a crackdown as it is enforcing existing laws that former presidents, including Obama, imposed rules to water down. In the same way that Democrats have said Trump is going beyond his authority, Republicans argue that Obama broke precedent to go far below what the law required him to do as far as deporting illegal immigrants inside the United States.

“People are blaming Trump for doing the sort of enforcement that the Immigration and Nationality Act mandates,” Arthur said.

Trump has chosen to enforce immigration laws to the fullest extent. Although he and Vice President JD Vance said they would go after the “worst of the worst” first, White House border czar Tom Homan also proactively warned that there would be collateral arrests because, in the eyes of the law, all illegal immigrants were guilty of having broken the law. Some just posed a greater safety threat to the public.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TRUCK DRIVERS FACE BUMP IN THE ROAD AS ICE HITS THE HIGHWAYS

In Obama’s second term, he limited who ICE could go after, even though federal law said any illegal immigrant should face justice. Because Obama imposed those priorities, focusing ICE on criminals and gang members, Democrats have viewed Trump as going beyond his authority in an effort to arrest noncriminal illegal immigrants, Arthur explained.

“People are mad at Trump because he’s literally just enforcing the law. He’s not creating new law. He’s not going beyond what the Immigration and Nationality Act says he can do. He’s doing what the Immigration and Nationality Act says he should do,” Arthur said.