WASHINGTON, DC — President Trump signed a fresh stack of immigration executive orders Wednesday morning, eliminating what aides described as “redundant procedural layers,” the most redundant of which turned out to be a 240-year-old layer called the judiciary.
The package, unveiled in the Roosevelt Room before a backdrop of three flags and one visibly nervous Cabinet secretary, expands ICE arrest authority into hospitals, schools, courthouses, places of worship, and “any other location where individuals may be physically present,” a category aides confirmed was meant to be exhaustive.
A second order creates a new tier called “expedited expedited removal,” which administration officials clarified differs from regular expedited removal in that it skips the part where anyone writes anything down.
A career attorney in the DHS general counsel’s office, who has been reassigned this month to a desk that validates parking, said the orders read “like someone described the Constitution to a guy at a tailgate and then asked him to fix it.” The attorney noted that one provision instructs asylum officers to deny applications “on a rolling basis prior to receipt,” a phrase she said her supervisor refused to define over email.
Stephen Miller, who reportedly drafted the orders during what aides described as “a normal Tuesday for him,” appeared at the signing wearing the expression of a man who has finally been allowed to do the thing. Miller declined to take questions but was overheard telling a junior staffer that the courts would “figure themselves out,” a sentiment the staffer wrote down and then immediately deleted.
The third order directs federal agencies to share immigration status data with one another, with state governments, with local governments, with landlords, with utility companies, and, in a clause that a Treasury official said was “definitely in there but we’re hoping no one notices,” with the IRS.
Senator Alex Padilla called the orders “a constitutional crisis with a cover sheet,” while Senator Tom Cotton praised them as “a long-overdue corrective” and suggested the administration go further by designating the Ninth Circuit a sanctuary jurisdiction and deporting it. House Speaker Mike Johnson, asked whether Congress would respond, said lawmakers were “watching closely,” which is the phrase Congress uses when it has gone home for the year.
An ICE field director in Phoenix, briefed on the new authorities Wednesday afternoon, told agents the guidance was simple: “If you think you can, you can.” Asked what the standard for probable cause now was, he reportedly paused for a long time and then said, “Vibes.”
The orders take effect immediately, retroactively, and, according to a footnote on page 31, also prospectively, in case anyone was thinking of being born here later.