By Felicia J. Persaud

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. August 24, 2026: During the 2024 presidential campaign, Americans were repeatedly warned about Project 2025 – the controversial conservative blueprint for a second Donald Trump presidency. This was as Trump distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation-led project, insisting he had nothing to do with it.

But perhaps it is time to pull that document off the proverbial shelf and read it again. Because 19 months into Trump’s second presidency, when it comes to immigration, much of what once sounded like a hardline conservative wish list now increasingly resembles the Trump administration’s checklist:

Mass deportation? Check.

Expanded immigration detention? Check.

Ending of Temporary Protected Status? Check.

Asylum restricted especially to Black and Brown people? Check.

Legal immigration pathways tightened? Check.

Immigration enforcement expanded deep into American communities? Check.

Birthright citizenship roll-back? Check.

Citizenship denaturalization? Check.

In August 2024, months before the presidential election, the non-partisan American Immigration Council examined Project 2025’s immigration proposals and described them as a detailed plan to restrict legal immigration while laying the foundation for potential mass deportation.
Perhaps most tellingly, the Council wrote that Project 2025 could be understood as an attempt to ensure a second Trump administration could pick up where the first one left off – “without the learning curve.”

Now 19 months after Trump returned to the White House, that observation seems remarkably prescient. Project 2025 proposed dramatically expanding ICE detention capacity, including seeking congressional funding for as many as 100,000 detention beds. It called for intensified interior immigration enforcement, greater use of ICE personnel for deportation operations, and penalties against countries refusing to accept deportees.

And here we are now!

The Trump administration said late last year that more than 600,000 non-citizens had been removed. It has also claimed enormous numbers of immigrants have left voluntarily or “self-deported,” although independent analysts caution that limited government data and changing definitions make comparisons and verification difficult.

Meanwhile, immigration detention has exploded. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holds approximately 65,765 immigrants in detention centers across the United States, according to tracking data current as of July 2026.  And despite the administration’s repeated rhetoric about targeting the “worst of the worst,” the data tells a more complicated story. According to TRAC data, approximately 70 percent of those in ICE detention have no criminal convictions, even as some three dozen have died in custody to date.

Project 2025 also went far beyond deporting undocumented immigrants. The American Immigration Council warned in 2024 that virtually every major avenue of legal immigration or humanitarian protection faced restrictions under the blueprint.

Humanitarian parole expansions? Project 2025 wanted them gone.

Refugee admissions? Reduced.

Temporary Protected Status? The document called broadly for stripping protections.

Student visas? Greater scrutiny.

Family immigration? Reduced.

H-1B, H-2A and H-2B employment visas? Restricted or ultimately eliminated in some cases.

Even T and U visas, which protect certain victims of trafficking, domestic violence and other crimes who assist law enforcement, faced proposed eligibility restrictions.

Now look around. The Trump administration has moved aggressively against TPS designations, humanitarian parole programs, and refugee protections while expanding expedited removal and pursuing third-country deportations. Some 350,000 Haitians have been stripped of TPS protection and could be deported to a country the US itself warns Americans not to travel to.

The immigration courts are also changing. Mass hearings involving dozens – sometimes more than 100 – immigrants at once are being used to move cases through overwhelmed dockets. New immigration judges are being hired as the administration seeks faster adjudication and removal.

Project 2025 anticipated something broader than individual immigration policies. It envisioned restructuring the government itself so immigration restrictionists would exercise greater control over the agencies implementing those policies. The American Immigration Council warned that many such changes could happen quietly through staffing decisions, budgets, and internal directives largely invisible to the public.

That may ultimately be Project 2025’s most consequential lesson. It wasn’t simply a list of policies; it was an instruction manual for changing the machinery of government so those policies could happen faster.

To be clear, not every immigration action taken by the Trump administration originated with Project 2025. Many of these ideas existed long before the document was published, including within Trump’s first administration and Stephen Miller.

But that almost misses the point. Project 2025 was published for everyone to read. We were all told what its authors wanted to accomplish, and we were told over and over about the consequences. All this despite Donald Trump falsely claiming he had nothing to do with it. Now less than two years into his second presidency, Americans no longer need to debate campaign rhetoric. They can compare the blueprint with the immigration system taking shape before their eyes.

Project 2025 was supposed to be a warning about what could happen; 19 months later, the question is no longer whether Trump embraced Project 2025. The question now is how much of Project 2025 America has already become.

Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of  NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily syndicated newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.

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