President Donald Trump kick-started his second tenure at the White House on Monday with a slew of policies aimed at fundamentally reshaping the United States immigration system. He declared a national emergency in the U.S.-Mexico border, issued limits on birthright citizenship, ended Biden-era parole programs and indefinitely paused refugee resettlements.

Trump’s executive orders are already being challenged in court. Experts say they are partly symbolic in nature. But they are direct reflections of Trump’s campaign promises to curb both legal and illegal immigration to the United States as well as instructions for future policy making for government agencies.

“As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” said Trump during his inauguration speech after highlighting some of his immigration-related executive orders.

Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, said that some of the orders would have immediate impact as well as send a message to the American public and government agencies that there were “big changes coming.”

Here’s what some of Trump’s executive orders aim to do and what they could mean for South Florida’s immigrant communities.

Ending parole processes

Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security secretary in an executive order titled “Securing our Borders” to end the parole processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. The Biden-era program allowed over half-a-million nationals from the four countries to live and work in the United States for a period of two years. Republicans challenged the program in court, saying that it was an overreach of executive parole authority, though a federal judge in Texas dismissed the case. New applications to sponsor parolees under the program for the four countries will no longer be accepted. Experts told the Miami Herald that it’s unlikely that pending applications will be processed and approved.

The Biden administration had already said in October that it would not renew the parole of current beneficiaries, but credited the program with reducing recorded unlawful crossings between ports of entry by people from these four countries by 91%. Many of the parolees had either traveled through South Florida or are living here, where they have relatives or gravitated to large communities from their home countries.

In the same executive order, Trump ordered the termination of all “categorical parole programs.” On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the agency would “phase out any parole programs that are not in accordance with the law” to end “the broad abuse of humanitarian parole.”

CBP One, a Biden-era mobile phone application that allowed undocumented immigrants to be temporarily paroled into the United States by scheduling appointments with immigration officials at the Southern Border, is no longer working. Customs and Border Protection announced that existing appointments had already been canceled as of Monday.

“This is a dramatic reduction of people’s ability to be able to come to the United States and present themselves if they are in precarious situations,” said Orozco.

Experts said that the family reunification programs for Cuba and Haiti, which allow people in the United States to bring their relatives in the two countries stateside, could also be at risk. The previous Trump administration paused interviews for the Cuban reunification process in 2017, and announced it would end Haiti’s program in 2019. The Biden administration had revamped and resumed them. Parole programs for Central American children, as well as Afghans and Ukrainians could also be affected, according to lawyers and experts.

“By shutting off lawful pathways to the United States, like through the parole programs, the Trump administration is sending a clear message that it doesn’t want immigrants to come through even through legal channels,” said Angela Kelley, senior adviser at American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Suspending entry of refugees

Trump directed the entry of refugees to the United States through the long-standing United States Refugees Admission Program to be indefinitely suspended as of Jan. 27. In three months, the Homeland Security and State Department secretaries will submit reports about whether the program’s resumption is beneficial to the United States. People who already had applications approved through the program will no longer be able to come to the country, including Afghans who had flights canceled.

During fiscal year 2024, Biden allowed 125,000 refugees to come into the country, mostly from Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. The Refugees Admission Program has provided a pathway for people from South Florida’s immigrant communities to resettle in the United States. Thousands of Cubans have historically entered the United States through the program, according to federal government data. Between October 2021 and December 2024, nearly 17,000 Venezuelans have come into the United States as refugees, according to State Department statistics.

Restricting birthright citizenship

Trump issued an executive order limiting birthright citizenship to only the children of legal permanent residents or American citizens. Longstanding precedent, based on judicial rulings and the 14th Amendment, has granted U.S. citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil, with the exception of the kids of diplomats.

The order states that the 14th amendment, which grants citizenship to people born or naturalized here, does not apply to the children of parents who are undocumented or in the country on a temporary work, tourism or education visa. In Florida, roughly 280,000 children with U.S. citizenship have at least one relative that’s undocumented, often a parent.

The order comes into effect next month and affects future births. It orders federal government agencies to not issue documents that recognize citizenship, such as passports, or accept documents from local and state governments that recognize citizenship. Orozco, of the American Immigration Council, pointed out that this order would also directly affect people on long-term work visas, like H-1Bs for high-skilled professionals who experience years-long backlogs to get green cards and citizenship.

The American Civil Liberties Union as well as over a dozen states have already moved to challenge the executive order in court as unconstitutional. While experts and lawyers have previously told the Herald such an executive order is unlawful, the courts could still overturn long-standing precedent.

“Courts are generally less predictable than they have been in generations past,” said Kelley, of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

More crackdowns to come

Experts on Monday said that unlawful crossings had significantly decreased at ports of entry in recent months and that Trump’s policies could increase illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border by decreasing legal pathways to come into the country.

Experts also highlighted there are likely more policy actions to come, including travel bans from nationals of certain countries similar to the ones from the first administration. On Tuesday, the Trump administration rescinded a memo that generally prohibits immigration enforcement in sensitive places such as hospitals, schools, disaster shelters and places of worship. Trump also said during the campaign that he wants to terminate Temporary Protected Status, a federal program that allows people from countries in turmoil already in the U.S. to temporarily live and work here, for countries such as Haiti, which he attempted during his first administration.

That could have significant consequences in Florida, the state with the highest number of TPS recipients, according to Congressional Research Service data. Ninety-two percent of the state’s roughly 296,000 TPS holders are Haitian or Venezuelan. During his last weeks in office, President Joe Biden extended the protections for nationals of Venezuela and El Salvador, among other countries.

“What’s happened here is significant … but there’s also the issue of what hasn’t happened yet. And what hasn’t happened yet does hearken back to the first Trump administration and things that were in place then. But given the executive orders that we are seeing and are being promised, all of these may follow, ” said Doris Meissner, U.S. Immigration Policy Program senior Fellow and Director at the Migration Policy Institute, during a Tuesday press call.

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