In a bid to follow through on his campaign’s most high-profile pledges, President Donald Trump and his deputies are accelerating deportation and border security efforts. The Trump administration’s aggressive approach to illegal immigration has already resulted in the lowest recorded number of border crossings in the nation’s history, with June seeing a total of zero illegal immigrants released across the country’s southern border into the interior. Now, immigration authorities are taking further measures to ensure that illegal immigrants are kept out of the U.S.

In a memo last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons instructed that illegal immigrants — both those stopped at the border and those arrested by ICE in the interior — will no longer be eligible to apply for bond hearings while fighting deportation orders but must be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings.” In the memo, obtained by The Washington Post, Lyons explained that the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ) have “revisited” their prior “legal position on detention and release authorities” and concluded that any illegal immigrant detained by ICE “may not be released from ICE custody.”

Previous policies have allowed illegal immigrants arrested in the interior without serious non-immigration-related criminal charges or convictions, such as murder or rape, to seek a bond hearing. ICE argued that the policy revision “closes” that “loophole” in order to enforce the “law as it was actually written to keep America safe.” The new policy has been partly enabled by a provision of the “Big Beautiful Bill” allocating approximately $45 billion for ICE detention facilities. According to multiple reports, illegal immigrants are already being denied bond hearings across the country, although some immigration judges are granting such hearings, prompting ICE to appeal.

Brandy Perez, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told The Washington Stand, “‘Catch and release’ is a dangerous policy that undermines federal immigration law, weakens U.S. border security, and puts Americans at risk. Title 8 makes clear that foreign nationals who have not been properly admitted or paroled in, or who arrive outside designated ports of entry, are inadmissible.” She continued, “The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) mandates that such individuals be detained pending their process for removal, not released back into American communities, where they strain public resources, may commit crimes, and illegally take American jobs.” Perez also noted that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that illegal immigrants have no statutory right to bond hearings.

“Critics argue that ending ‘catch and release’ strips aliens of due process, but in fact, the process due under U.S. immigration law is more quickly carried out, and more likely to be enforced, if the alien remains in detention until the process is complete,” Perez explained. She added, “Ending ‘catch and release’ will return DHS to following federal law and detaining inadmissible aliens. It will restore the credible enforcement of immigration law, increase national security, and keep us all safe.”

The Trump administration has also begun firing immigration judges. According to a report from NPR, 15 sitting immigration judges were informed by the DOJ last week that their employment will end July 22, and another two were fired Monday. NPR noted that 50 immigration judges have been fired since Trump returned to the White House in January. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), a branch of the DOJ responsible for immigration courts, has repeatedly instructed immigration judges to streamline review processes in order to tackle a four million-case backlog and align with White House goals, including by filing paperwork online and dismissing “legally insufficient” asylum claims orally and without hearings. EOIR has also rescinded a number of the previous administration’s policies, including one requiring real-time translators in the courtroom.

Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and a former immigration judge, explained in comments to TWS, “Many aliens — probably half of the ones on the immigration court docket, if not more — will apply for asylum regardless of the strength of their claim or even if they have a claim at all, because it’s the only form of relief available. Otherwise, they’re going to be removed.” He continued, “There are a number of good asylum claims, about 20% of all asylum claims historically have been granted. But in order to get to those good asylum claims, immigration judges have to work their way through all of the non-meritorious claims.” Arthur clarified, “So the biggest impediment to the immigration judges issuing those orders of removal is adjudicating the forms of relief or protection that those aliens file, so that means getting through all of those bad asylum claims and getting to the good asylum claims and issuing orders of removal as quickly as possible.”

“What the guidance tells the immigration judges to do is look at those applications before you hear the testimony of the alien and determine whether or not that alien does actually satisfy the basic requirements for asylum,” Arthur explained. He continued, “Key to actually resolving the backlogs in the immigration courts is getting those asylum claims adjudicated as quickly as possible. Again, they’re not the only claims that people make, but they are the most prevalent.”

The ”Big Beautiful Bill” also set aside several billion dollars to hire roughly 100 additional immigration judges, whom Arthur speculated would primarily be in immigration courts dealing with illegal immigrants who are already detained. “Coupled with the crackdown on granting bonds in cases involving aliens who aren’t actually amenable to bond, most of the focus is really going to shift over to the detained immigration courts,” Arthur anticipated. He added that cases in detained immigration courts “move much more quickly” than cases in regular immigration court.

Despite his promise of “mass deportations” and his administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement, however, Trump may be shielding those who fuel illegal immigration — and profit from it. According to a report from Axios, the Department of Labor (DOL) is crafting a new, streamlined work visa program to allow hotels, restaurants, and farms to continue hiring non-Americans at reduced wages, in order to replace illegal immigrants who have been working in those industry for decades at reduced wages.

Trump had previously suggested a program allowing those illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. but quickly terminated the “amnesty” plan in the face of backlash from voters. An unnamed administration official reportedly clarified that the new work visa program “is not amnesty. It’s not amnesty lite. No one who is illegally here is being given a pathway to citizenship or residency.” Yet the decision is still facing intense backlash, particularly as Republicans like Rep. María Elvira Salazar (Fla.), joined by Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Gabe Evans (R-Colo.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), Young Kim (R-Calif.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.), and David Valadao (R-Calif.), have begun promoting amnesty legislation.

CIS Policy Studies Director Jessica Vaughan told TWS, “Addressing illegal employment is key to controlling illegal immigration, and protecting job opportunities is one of the most important reasons that we have immigration laws to begin with.”

She further explained, “There is no such thing as a job Americans won’t do, and we have millions of able-bodied Americans who have given up looking for work, but who should be working to support themselves and their families. American employers should be tapping this pool of people, but instead, too often, they are able to get away with hiring illegal aliens who work for less money and will tolerate more abuse.”

Vaughan continued, “Employers in certain industries, like agriculture, hotels, manufacturing, and restaurants need to become less dependent on illegal workers.” She added, “Consumers should be less tolerant of illegal hiring practices, much as they have shunned products made with trafficked labor.” Vaughan clarified that illegal employment “is the main motivation for illegal immigration, and that’s why it’s so important that we require employers to follow the rules, while making it possible for them to do so.”

Vaughan further contended, “When it becomes much harder for illegal immigrants to find and keep jobs, then they will decide to go home, or not to come at all.” Citing the example of a meatpacking plant in Nebraska, where an ICE raid was followed by “a line out the door of the hiring office” of Americans applying for jobs, she added, “This will open up opportunities for Americans and legal immigrants.”

“Any discussion of an amnesty program is counterproductive,” Vaughan went on to assert. “For one thing, it will severely undermine the effort to get illegal immigrants to return home on their own. It is more important for Congress to fix the loopholes and weak spots in our existing law that enabled the Biden administration to set off the mass migration crisis.”

“The only people who will benefit from an amnesty are the people who are here in defiance of our laws, and those who supported them by hiring them illegally,” Vaughan concluded. “Amnesties are a bad deal for all those who play by the rules, including legal immigrants who have sponsors, pay their fees, and wait their turn.”