On Immigration, Project 2025 Reflects Ex-President’s Essence

Maribel Hastings

Posted July 18, 2024

When Donald Trump claims he doesn’t know something, or that it has nothing to do with him — especially something sinister— he means the exact opposite: he does know, and he is involved.

Currently, he is alleging that he knows “nothing” about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which outlines the macabre agenda of a potential second Trump administration on various public policy issues, including immigration. But the opposite is true, and Trump is acting like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Trump took to his Truth Social platform to deny ties to Project 2025, which is starting to become more widely known and shocking to those who read it — unless you sympathize with authoritarian governments.

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them,” Trump assured, while denying links to the plan’s authors.

Trump does know who they are and what they have done; they work as a team. According to the site Popular Information, “of the 38 people responsible for writing and editing Project 2025, 31 were appointed or nominated to positions in the Trump administration and transition. In other words, while Trump claims he has ‘nothing to do’ with the people who created Project 2025, over 81% had formal roles in his first administration.”

Project 2025 is a compendium of all of Trump’s public policies and strategies for a second term if he is elected on November 5.

Last week, we also learned that the Heritage Foundation is one of the sponsors of the Republican National Convention, which will take place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin next week.

And if you want even more evidence of the ties that bind Trump and Project 2025, just read press reports about the Republican platform language. Although they made a few changes on issues like abortion and same sex marriage, on immigration matters the platform seems to have been torn from the 900-odd pages that comprise this plan that Trump, now, does not know.

Project 2025 is a compendium of all of Trump’s public policies and strategies for a second term if he is elected on November 5.

It tackles diverse issues, but in general terms it tries to modify the democratic governing system, as we know it today, replacing it with another in which Trump’s role is the most important and all of the agencies serve to function in Trump’s interests. For example, it talks about removing some 50,000 employees from various federal agencies and replacing them with people loyal to Trump. And the idea is to look for loopholes, to do all of this without intervention by Congress.

The immigration issue is one of the plan’s central points and it is based on the largest operation of raids and deportations in the history of the United States, which Trump himself has threatened.

It talks about a purge of migrants — of raids, mass deportations, and enormous detention camps. Similar policies have been tried on a lesser scale at the state level, in Republican states, and ultimately these measures end up violating the civil rights of citizens and permanent residents because undocumented people don’t have a mark that identifies them as such. Not to mention the terror that a police state would have on communities of immigrants and people who are not immigrants. And their devastating effect on the country’s economy.

Beyond the “purge,” Project 2025 tries to eliminate every program that has benefited immigrants by canceling TPS, affecting 700,000 beneficiaries; and eliminating DACA and temporary permission for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaragua, and Venezuelans, among others. It also wants to revive other controversial programs like Remain in Mexico, the Muslim ban, and Title 42, to name a few.

Cecilia Esterline, Immigration Research Analyst at the Niskanen Center, wrote that Project 2025 contemplates more than 175 immigration provisions. “Project 2025 elucidates how the administration would halt legal immigration, centralize power in the federal government, decimate privacy protections, and risk American security and prosperity, all in pursuit of a political obsession with immigration.”

This is the same obsession of Trump, who cannot deny that, on immigration, Project 2025 reflects his essence.

Maribel Hastings is a Senior Advisor to América’s Voice.