Project 2025 Implementation: Executive Orders 11 - 15

These executive orders contradict themselves and paint a sad picture for America. Immigrants are so crucial to the United States, and we should welcome them warmly. From the greatest scientists and experts in their fields to the asylum seeker fleeing violence and poverty from their home. We should celebrate them as they celebrate with us. Instead, we provoke distrust and disdain from our neighboring allies by spitting in their faces while pulling our government apart from itself for billionaires. 

EO#11: Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists - This order does exactly what it says; it instructs the Secretary of State to take the necessary actions to officially designate specific cartels as global terrorists. 

• Project 2025 does not specifically call cartels terrorists. But on page 554 it says "The department’s primary directive under the next Administration should be to return to an unapologetic focus on dismantling these criminal organizations and incarcerating their membership. Once this reprioritization occurs, the department’s political leadership should take concrete steps to use agency reach and resources to prevent these criminal organizations from operating and surviving." and on the following page it says "In addition to finalizing the southwestern land border wall, the next Administration should take a creative and aggressive approach to tackling these dangerous criminal organizations at the border. This could include use of active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to assist in arrest operations along the border..."
  
  Terrorist designation is generally reserved for organizations who use violence to achieve political goals. Cartels are money-focused crime rings which should surely be held accountable by America for crimes committed within our borders. This designation threatens to have a chilling effect on our trade partnerships with Mexico and South American countries and opponents fear that Trump is setting the stage to take military action in Mexican territory which Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, has stated she will not tolerate. This further strains our relationship with Mexico, which let's not forget is our ally, and one of our largest trade partners. I don't think it's extreme to suggest that if we're going to target Mexican cartels operating within US borders, we should work together with the Mexican government to do so.

EO#12: Establishing and Implementing the Department of Government Efficiency - This order renames the United States Digital Service to the United States Doge Service. The US Digital Service was a tech unit implemented by Obama which provided IT consultations to federal agencies to improve and simplify digital services and improve government websites. It also establishes a temporary organization under that umbrella called the US Doge Service Temporary Organization and commands agency heads to establish a DOGE team of at least 4 people in every agency. The stated goal is to modernize government IT and promote inter-agency networks and systems to ensure data integrity and responsible data collection and synchronization. In practice, however, DOGE isn't doing any of that. It has shuttered US departments and agencies, demanded and gained access to classified data and sensitive government systems, some of which has been leaked by individual DOGE employees and through their website which was not properly secured and was immediately hacked. They claim to be tracking down fraud waste and abuse in government contracts, but the numbers they're releasing don't add up. 

• The foreword of Project 2025 promises to "dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people". On page 8 it lists agencies and departments with bureaucratic employees and claims they're harming the US with things like anti-racism, transgender rights, and intersectionality. Then it says "Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening. Nearly every power center held by the Left is funded or supported, one way or another, through the bureaucracy by Congress."
  
  Dismantling the administration of the US government is akin to dismantling the government itself. Because the authors of Project 2025 don't agree with the goals of agencies and departments authorized by Congress, they believe those agencies are bureaucratic bloat and should be cut like fat. Trump and DOGE are restructuring our government before our eyes, not for the purpose of saving American tax dollars, but for the purpose of enriching themselves and consolidating executive power over the other branches of government. 

EO#13: Protecting the American People Against Invasion - This EO revokes Biden's deportation priorities of national security and public threats, and instead requires anyone without immigration status to register with the US or face immigration enforcement regardless of whether they have a criminal record. It limits use of parole and temporary protected status which allows qualified people to receive work permits, and directs DHS and DOJ to withhold federal funds from sanctuary states and cities, expand the ability of local police to carry out functions of immigration officers, and expand detention facilities. 

• On page 145, Project 2025 says that CONGRESS should improve the integrity of temporary work visa programs, repeal temporary protected status designations, make E-verify (an immigrant registration program) mandatory, and legislate parole standards. And on page 150 it says CONGRESS should "set financial disincentives from jurisdictions that implement either official or unofficial sanctuary policies"
  
  The authors of Project 2025 understand that Congress must do these things, and yet Trump issued this executive order on day 1. This order undermines the rights of cities and states to provide sanctuary for immigrants, and undermines Trump's campaign promise to deport only criminals. So many industries in America rely on immigrant employment and work visas. Agriculture, hospitality, manufacturing, and construction are all industries that will be greatly impacted by mass deportation resulting from EOs like this one. 
  
  

EO#14: Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship - This executive order challenges birthright citizenship. If you're born in the United States to immigrant parents, even if they have temporary protected status like student or work visas, you are not a citizen according to this executive order. It has been blocked by several federal judges.

• Project 2025 does not specifically advocate for the end of birthright citizenship, from what I could tell. It makes no mention of the 14th amendment which established birthright citizenship. It does call DACA an unlawful program on page 145, despite it being upheld by the US Supreme Court, and it does But it does not mention children born in the US with immigrant parents. 
  This is the first executive order I've come across which has no direct ties to Project 2025. Based on my research so far, 94% of Trump's executive orders (or 14/15) have correlated directly with policies and goals listed in Project 2025. 

EO#15: Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats - This order requires that federal agencies review and update the vetting processes for immigrants seeking visas or refugee status to ensure no immigrants pose security or public safety threats. 

• On page 143 Project 2025 states that "Additionally, USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) resources have been misappropriated to focus more on creating and expanding large-scale parole and temporary status programs that violate the law and are otherwise contrary to congressional intent instead of focusing on a more secure and efficient process for those who are seeking benefits. The ever-increasing number of applications filed has made it difficult to vet applications adequately for eligibility, fraud, and specific national security and public safety problems."
  
  This sounds an awful lot like the Biden immigration priorities which focused on threats to national security and public safety. EO#13 revoked this priority. So Trump signed one executive order de-prioritizing threats to national security and public safety and then 2 EOs later signed one that re-establishes that priority. He just didn't want it to be under Biden's name, I guess? Clearly, we should focus on threats to national security or public safety in vetting immigrants. We didn't need Trump or Project 2025 to tell us this, but they did.