The order on birthright citizenship clearly lacks any legal merit. It is an immediate challenge to the judicial system; a lawsuit has already been filed in a federal court in Massachusetts. Will the judiciary–in the end, the Supreme Court– follow the text and history of the Fourteenth Amendment and the clear case law or bend the knee and go completely MAGA? If the former, can it enforce its will against a president whose respect for the law is completely selective and self-interested? These are extremely important questions, the resolution of which will have enormous implications for our system for the foreseeable future.
The new Title 42 interpretation should also fail a legal challenge, since there is no factual basis for it, but that issue will take longer to resolve. Along the same lines, attempts to deny asylum seekers due process will also run into legal trouble, and “Remain in Mexico” depends on the good will of the Mexican government. The actual scope of the orders relating to the use of the military in immigration matters, another issue with great legal and political importance, cannot be determined at this time. We’ll have to see what they really mean over the next few months.
What Trump really needs, if he genuinely wants to begin a mass deportation program, is a vast increase in funding of the immigration system and the elimination of ambiguities in the law relating to people who are neither pure economic nor political refugees. With the filibuster in place, his chances of #2 are slim. #1 is more likely, but spending increases will be fraught in a world in which tax cuts are the real priority.