The Trump administration has detained migrants attempting to enter the United States at the United States–Mexico border. Government reports from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General in May 2019 and July 2019 found that migrants had been detained under conditions that failed federal standards. These conditions have included prolonged detention, overcrowding, and poor hygiene and food standards.
The United States has a history of detaining migrants from Central America since the 1970s under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, with boat migrations from the Caribbean resulting in detentions from the 1980s onwards, under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Since the 2000s, prosecutions of migrants who illegally crossed the border became a priority under the presidency of George W. Bush and the presidency of Barack Obama. The Trump administration took a stricter approach than did previous administrations regarding migrant detentions, allowing no exemptions for detention, unlike the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.
Background
Statistics from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) showed that the number of migrants detained at the United States-Mexico border in 2017's financial year was around 300,000, the lowest number since 1971. In 2018's financial year the number was around 400,000. From the financial years of 2000 to 2008, the number was always higher than 600,000, with the highest being in 2000's financial year, with over 1.6 million migrants detained. From the financial years of 2009 to 2018, the number was always lower than 600,000.
Reasons for migrants to enter the United States include escaping violence and poverty in their country.
The responsibility for long-term detention of migrants falls under the purview of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not CBP. Improper entry into the United States can result in a federal jail sentence of up to 180 days. Repeat offenders can be jailed up to two years, with extra years added if such a migrant has previous criminal convictions. At the time of the Trump administration, the state of immigration laws of the United States gives the executive branch significant leeway to decide which immigrants can be detained or released pending their hearings.
History of immigration to the United States
The United States has been described by many as a "nation of immigrants", but has not always treated immigrants well historically: for example, from 1790 to 1952, American law restricted naturalization to white immigrants. Around the 1910s (with the occurrence of World War I), Ellis Island, formerly an immigration conduit for migrants arriving by sea, became a detention and deportation center for migrants.
Immigration from Mexico was nearly unrestricted in the United States until the late 1920s. Despite American nativist and xenophobic sentiments since the 1880s that Mexicans were of an inferior race, the need for labor temporarily trumped that sentiment. In 1929, the United States passed Section 1325 of Title 8 of the United States Code, that made crossing the U.S.-Mexican border without authorization a federal crime. Also, 1929's stock market crash and increasing unemployment led to "repatriation drives" by local and federal officials, active campaigns and raids through the 1930s by Americans that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants being deported, even if many (and their children) were by that time American citizens or had entered the U.S. legally. The post-World War II Bracero Program of 1944 to 1964 allowed for legal immigration from Mexico as laborers, but resulted in an increase in illegal immigration. As such, 1954's Operation Wetback to deport millions of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico was enacted, with periodic deportation drives continuing in the years ahead. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 resulted in the establishment of a quota for immigration to the U.S. from the Western Hemisphere, which resulted in an increase in illegal immigration from Mexico. Expanding agricultural and service sectors in the United States spurred even higher illegal immigration from Mexico and other countries of the Western Hemisphere in the 1980s and 1990s.
Trump administration actions In January 2017, Trump declared that 11 million immigrants in the United States would be targeted for detentions and deportation, including legal migrants who had previously committed a crime but not been arrested.
In January 2019, Trump made 8 claims in 12 days that human traffickers transport women across the Mexico-U.S. border by putting them in vehicles and taping their mouths. He said that this was a common scenario, but experts attested no knowledge of such matters occurring. There have also been no news reports of such matters. After Trump made these claims, Border Patrol leadership asked their agents to speedily provide "any information" on Trump's claims.
Also in January 2019, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders falsely stated that CBP had apprehended almost 4,000 known or suspected terrorists "that came across our southern border." 3,755 known or suspected terrorists were indeed apprehended in the fiscal year of 2017, but this included those who entered from airports and seaports (the majority of those apprehended were at airports). NBC News reported that from October 2017 to March 2018, the Trump administration only apprehended 41 known or suspected terrorists at the southern border, of which 35 were American citizens or lawful permanent residents. In 2017, the State Department had reported that there is "no credible evidence terrorist groups sent operatives via Mexico into the United States". Questioned on Sanders' false claims, Vice President Mike Pence said that "3,000 special interest individuals, people with suspicious backgrounds that might suggest terrorist connections were apprehended at our southern border". Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen made a similar claim. However, special interest aliens refer to people coming from a country that has produced terrorists – special interest aliens not necessarily suspected terrorists themselves.
In February 2019, Trump declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, attributing it to an influx of migrants who would commit criminal activities in the United States. Maria Sacchetti of The Washington Post responded that in that month, more than 60% of the immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal history.
In June 2019, the United States Senate passed 84–8 a bipartisan bill providing around $4.6 billion of funds, including $1.1 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to improve facilities and care for migrants, and around $2.9 billion for United States Department of Health and Human Services to improve conditions for migrant children in their case. Also that month, the United States House of Representatives passed 305–102 the same version of the bill as the Senate, despite objections from Democrats wanting more protections for migrant children and more means to ensure accountability for the funds.
In 2025, under the Trump administration, the budget of ICE increased to more than 85 billion dollars, following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is an increase by more than 600% compared to 2024
Comparison with past administrations
Professor Kevin Johnson, writing in the Santa Clara Law Review in 2017, described that defenders of the Trump administration's immigration policies have claimed that the policies were a continuation of the previous administration's policies under Barack Obama. Johnson refuted this by asserting that the Trump administration's policies "differ in important respects" from the Obama administration's. Immigration policies under Obama featured both "tough enforcement" and some "generosity". Trump has employed "systematic efforts to dramatically escalate immigration enforcement", while his administration has reduced or possibly removed "more generous treatment of immigrants subject to possible removal from the United States". Professor Johnson and Professor Rose Cuison-Villazor wrote for Wake Forest Law Review in May 2019 that the Trump administration's immigration policies are "tougher" than that of previous administrations under "any modern president". While the Reagan and Obama administrations employed detention of migrants, the Trump administration had mandatory detention, and "no previous administration resorted to the separation of families as a device to deter migration from Central America".
Rebecca Torres, published in 2018's Gender, Place & Culture, described that the Trump administration is "the most anti-refugee" and anti-immigrant administration "in recent U.S. history", with an increase in immigrant detentions and "unprecedented" actions taken against refugees and immigrants. It followed the Obama administration, which had featured a record number of deportations, as well as policies aimed at deterring Latin Americans from moving to the United States.
Robert Farley, Eugene Kiely and Lori Robertson of Factcheck.org responded to an April 2018 claim by President Trump that there were "ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release". They wrote that Trump's claim "distorts the facts". There were no laws instituted to mandate the practice of catch and release (which releases some migrants into the United States pending their immigration hearings, instead of detaining them), however, it was indeed a policy under previous administrations, due to exemptions to detention granted to certain children, families and asylum seekers. Under the Clinton administration in 1997, the legal case of the Flores Settlement Agreement resulted in the policy that unaccompanied migrant minors can only be detained for a maximum of 20 days before release. Under the Obama administration in 2015, a federal judge ruled that families with minors must be released as soon as possible. Additionally, migrants applying for asylum may also be released from detention under "humanitarian parole". However, other than these exemptions, the George W. Bush administration instituted a policy in 2006 that all other illegal immigrants crossing the border are to be detained until deportation, which was also continued under the Obama administration.
As covered by D'Angelo Gore of Factcheck.org in May 2018, President Trump falsely claimed that family separations with adult detentions were because of "bad laws that the Democrats gave us." In fact, it was Trump's own administration who that month instituted the policy of zero tolerance resulting in family separations, because the George W. Bush and Obama administrations detained families together. Gore noted that in 2008, George W. Bush, a Republican president, signed a bipartisan bill, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, mandating that unaccompanied migrant minors must be passed to American relatives or the Office of Refugee Resettlement, but this law does not mandate family separations, as the migrant parents are not required to be detained when their children are released.