With House Republicans running short on time before November, it’s time to reflect on Donald Trump’s second governance period and the outcomes on immigration.
After a decade of commitments, what do we really have?
Irrespective of the upcoming November results, Republicans have utilized much of their governing opportunity. So, when the GOP gains control of Congress again, a straightforward question emerges: What will change?
There’s been progress, but it falls significantly short of initial promises.
Recently, Congress enacted the Laken Riley Act, which broadens mandatory detention for certain migrants facing specific charges. Additionally, the 2025 reconciliation legislation directs substantial funding—billions of dollars—towards ICE, enhancing detention facilities, border security infrastructure, and enforcement personnel.
These achievements are noteworthy. Yet, simply financing mechanisms isn’t the same as overhauling the law.
Republicans have not implemented a lasting decrease in legal immigration. They didn’t abolish the diversity visa lottery, nor did they clarify birthright citizenship legally. There’s been no permanent defunding of sanctuary cities, and they didn’t revise the removal statutes or the judicial review processes that routinely delay enforcement actions.
Trump’s accomplishments via executive action present a more robust record. A Center for Immigration Studies analysis indicates that the foreign-born population decreased by 2.9 million between January 2025 and July 2026. The Congressional Budget Office similarly observes a decline in net immigration within its “other foreign national” classification starting in 2025, following the significant surge during the Biden administration.
That’s a positive development. However, relying predominantly on executive measures ushers in its own complications.
The CBO predicts total net immigration exceeding 10 million from 2021 to 2024. Given this context, halting the influx and reversing part of that surge isn’t sufficient if the foundational statutes are left unchanged, especially since the next administration could easily roll back much of the executive policies.
The legislative results, frankly, remain embarrassingly sparse.
During his first term, Trump backed the RAISE Act, a proposal aimed at significantly cutting legal immigration, limiting chain migration, and eliminating the diversity visa lottery. Yet, in his second term, we’ve seen no substantial push from the White House for an immigration moratorium or a rewrite of the legal immigration framework.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced the PAUSE Act last year, aimed at halting most immigration until Congress tackled the systemic flaws. That, too, never became a priority for Republican governance.
In contrast, the promise of mass deportations resulted in selective enforcement.
Trump has often muddled the clarity of the restrictionist narrative. He has supported the notion of enrolling 500,000 Chinese students in U.S. universities, discussed the necessity for increased foreign labor, advocated for expansion of the H-2A program, and even suggested protections for undocumented workers in agriculture and hospitality.
These issues could have been addressed through legislation—yet Congress chose otherwise.
There’s a similar gap in removals.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 aimed to expedite removals, but decades later, we’re still mired in litigation over removal policy, with little to no congressional action to rectify ongoing legal challenges.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia illustrates this point; although the administration claims he’s linked to MS-13, which his attorneys contest, his deportation—initiated over a year ago—has spiraled into one of the administration’s biggest immigration confrontations, and his case continues to linger in federal court.
This situation doesn’t argue against executive action—it questions the effectiveness of relying solely on it while sidelining legislative solutions. It also raises concerns about the growing influence of judicial power over the executive branch.
Looking at the current court cases, a federal ruling struck down a visa pause affecting 75 countries in August. A Massachusetts court rejected the $100,000 H-1B fee requirement, leaving the First Circuit unyielding in their stance during the government’s appeals. Meanwhile, another judge provided minimal relief for H-4 visa holders facing a work permit extension cutoff.
Furthermore, a federal judge recently suspended the administration’s move to delay visa processing for diversity visas, demanding the State Department report three times weekly on compliance with the order through the fiscal year’s end.
As for DACA, it stays intact for current recipients, despite federal courts deeming it unlawful. Congress still hasn’t managed to prevent illegal immigrants from being counted in the census.
Moreover, the administration’s efforts to apply the welfare reform law more broadly—to programs like Head Start—were permanently halted when a judge found administrative procedures were violated.
Republicans were aware that judges would challenge nearly all significant executive immigration initiatives. That was expected. It shaped the operational landscape.
Lower courts have placed limitations on unwarranted immigration arrests and mandated hearings for individual detainees. They have also delayed the administration’s third-country-removal policy for several months. On September 29, the Supreme Court intervened to review that situation in December.
Even if relief is eventually granted, time keeps ticking away.
This is why Republicans ought to have utilized their trifecta to achieve two goals: enforce the law using every lawful executive means and also update the legal framework, preventing the next administration from easily overturning policies.
They accomplished a lot in the former; they scarcely attempted to do the latter.
For instance, Roy and other immigration advocates urged the GOP in 2025 to constrain judicial reviews in removal cases and leverage essential legislation to embed enforcement amendments into law. Unfortunately, they found no backing from the administration, and those initiatives ultimately failed.
This oversight carries far more weight than yet another press statement from the White House announcing an executive action.
Executive orders are temporary. Agency rules can change. Guidance materials may vanish. Shifting priorities can alter enforcement policies. Lower courts can postpone the implementation of new policies for significant periods. A statute mandates that the following administration confront actual laws instead of merely erasing a predecessor’s directives.
That was supposedly the rationale behind winning Congress.
Despite eleven years since Trump brought immigration to the forefront of Republican politics, the U.S. today possesses more resources for enforcement and maintains a significantly tighter border than it did two years ago. Those achievements—real as they may be—are nonetheless fleeting. The structural issues that contributed to the Biden-era surge persist largely unaddressed.
Whatever the outcome in November, the Republicans have exhausted most of their governing time. The pressing question for the next time the GOP finds itself in power is clear: What will be different?
If the solution is merely another set of executive orders followed by court injunctions, then we will have learned nothing at all. Immigration policy will remain a one-sided trajectory: Democrats will continue to facilitate migration, Republicans will intermittently slow it down, and hardly any restrictions will endure the subsequent power shift.
