Our Voices

This Week’s Spotlight on Human Rights

Hours into his return to the Oval Office, President Trump revoked an executive order that aimed to “advance effective, accountable policing and criminal justice practices to enhance public trust and public safety.” But Trump did not just revoke many of his predecessor’s reforms — he also in the process reversed policies that he championed during his first term.


On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump issued more than a dozen Executive Orders (EOs) that seek to sow fear in immigrant communities. These orders seek to militarize our borders and immigration enforcement more broadly, massively expand the existing deportation and detention machinery, punish organizations that care for immigrants as well as local governments that prioritize protecting their residents, and misinterpret the U.S. Constitution and immigration laws. They attempt to do everything from effectively ending asylum and birthright citizenship to teeing up immigration bans and expansive indefinite detention. They are steeped in white supremacist ideology and criminalizing narratives about immigrants. Together, the EOs create a web of entanglement among immigration, military and criminal law enforcement at federal, state, and local levels. 


At the start of his second term President Trump has positioned himself at the crest of a global wave of hard-line conservative populism, offering fuel and inspiration to surging nationalist parties in the European Union and beyond. Those parties are generally united by tough stances against immigrants, support for what they call “traditional” values in opposition to L.G.B.T. rights, aversion to climate regulations and pugnacious critiques of establishment politicians and parties.


As Donald Trump was inaugurated in Washington on Monday, the typical congratulatory messages were also accompanied by some from Latin American leaders that deviated sharply from the usual diplomatic norms. “There is no reason why Mexico should keep its head down or feel lesser than. We are a great country, a cultural power,” said President Claudia Sheinbaum during her daily morning news conference. “Our relationship with the United States will be one of equals.”