Make border security, detention and deportation the department's priority
What the document says“Prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical”
The chapter says a conservative Administration needs to return the department to what it calls the right mission, size and budget, reorganizing it and shifting significant resources away from supporting components to operational ones, with border security and immigration enforcement as the priority.
What the document actually says“Prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical”
Guarding the border must come first. So must holding and sending back people who broke the rules.
This department does many jobs. The book says the border should come first. It wants money moved from other parts to that work.
Protecting the American People Against Invasion
2025-01-20 · 90 FR 8443
The order sets the priority the chapter asks for. Section 2 makes total and efficient enforcement of the immigration laws, including detention, the policy of the United States; section 4 directs the Secretary to enable ICE, CBP and USCIS to set enforcement priorities and makes enforcement against illegal entry and unlawful presence the primary mission of Homeland Security Investigations; section 10 directs all legally available resources toward detention facilities. The structural half of the proposal is absent: the order does not reorganize the department, does not change its size or budget, and does not shift resources from supporting components to operational ones.
The order puts border law first, and holding people is part of it. Its border and visa units may set their own aims. All lawful funds go to holding space. But the order does not remake the department. Its size, budget and staff mix stay the same.
7 agency rules
- Alien Registration Form and Evidence of RegistrationHomeland Security Department · March 12, 2025
- Imposition and Collection of Civil Penalties for Certain Immigration-Related ViolationsHomeland Security Department, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Justice Department, Executive Office for Immigration Review · June 27, 2025
- Visas: Visa Bond Pilot ProgramState Department · August 5, 2025
- Codification of Certain U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Law Enforcement AuthoritiesHomeland Security Department · September 5, 2025
- Adverse Effect Wage Rate Methodology for the Temporary Employment of H-2A Nonimmigrants in Non-Range Occupations in the United StatesLabor Department, Employment and Training Administration · October 2, 2025
- Visas: Visa Bond ProgramState Department · August 3, 2026
- Regulatory Changes Required by the Energy Security and Lightering Independence Act of 2022Homeland Security Department · August 11, 2026
Each of these names the order above in its own summary, preamble or filing. That is a fact about the document, not a finding that it carries out this proposal: it is one step further away than the order is, and what it does about the proposal is a reading nobody has made here.