President Trump released an immigration framework that would fix the broken immigration system through merit- based reform and provide the resources needed to secure the border. This includes closing the legal loopholes that enable illegal immigration, ending chain migration, and eliminating the visa lottery.

Trump set the refugee cap for 2019 at 30,000. This is a significant reduction from 45,000 in 2018 and President Obama's cap for 2017 of 110,000.

It was reported in July 2017 that due to President Trump's strong immigration enforcement policies, numerous illegal immigrants chose to self-deport rather than being prosecuted and deported. In addition, many illegal immigrants fearing deportation fled to Canada, a trend that continued after the end of 2017. The number of migrants coming into Canada became so large that the Canadian government sent soldiers to take care of the situation. The surge in illegal immigration to Canada that was attributed to President Trump and his policies continued into 2018, and Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board was "overwhelmed" by the number of migrants entering the country. On July 18, 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau even appointed a minister in charge of border security to combat the problem.

Trump signed Executive Order 13780, titled "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States," ensured that foreign nationals were properly vetted before they gain entry to the country. This EO revised and replaced the similar order the President signed in January. The revised executive order imposed a temporary freeze on entry by individuals from six countries that are hotbeds for terrorism, and suspended the entry into the U.S. for 90 days for aliens from the following countries: Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Sudan.

Trump signed Executive Order 13768, titled "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States," stated that sanctuary jurisdictions who refused to comply with immigration enforcement measures would not be eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or Secretary of Homeland Security.

November 2018 President Trump signed a presidential proclamation to make alterations to the asylum process by attempting to reduce the flood of migrants who enter the United States illegally before asking for asylum. Under an interim final rule that implements the proclamation, individuals wishing to file an asylum claim will be required to present themselves at legal ports of entry, where a determination can be made about whether they have a 'credible fear' of persecution in their homelands. Those with valid credible fear claims will be admitted to the United States. FAIR President Dan Stein hailed the proclamation as a "necessary first step" in protecting the integrity of our asylum laws.

The Trump Administration published its proposed rule on public charge exclusions— reiterating the common-sense notion that no immigrant should become a burden to the United States. Immigrants are supposed to be a benefit, not a hardship, to the United States. Additionally, welfare programs are meant to serve the most vulnerable of Americans as stopgap measures to assist them during their times of need. This proposed rule remains in line with President Trump's campaign promise to put Americans first.

It was reported that Trump was considering renaming the largest migrant detention center to “The Barack Hussein Obama Il Detention Center.”

Efforts have been made by journalists to paint Trump as advocating for a Muslim registry, but what he proposed was a database for Syrian refugees.

The Administration has more than doubled the number of jurisdictions participating in the 287(g) program, which enables State and local law enforcement to aid immigration enforcement.

January 27, 2017. Right after taking office Trump signed an executive order indefinitely banning the admission of Syrian refugees and suspended the overall refugee program for 120 days. By 2018 Trump reduced refugee admissions 75% compared to Obama in 2016.

President Trump signed an executive order regarding the temporary suspension of refugees and others from certain high-risk countries after the first one was blocked by the courts. A second order he signed in March made some clarifications and minor improvements over the first, such as exempting green card holders from the ban and excluding Iraq from it as it had developed an acceptable vetting process.

Trump made it clear that he would help Christian refugees, a reversal from the Obama Administration and by the end of 2017 Christian refugees comprised 53.2% of those admitted into the U.S., versus 32% Muslims, with the numbers flipping from the previous year. By contrast, Trump admitted as many refugees in 2017 as Obama did in his last three months in office.

By 2019, Christian refugees increased to 80% of the refugees admitted by Trump.

In late March/early April 2017, the Trump Administration cracked down on H-IB visas in a series of actions, making it much more difficult for entry-level programmers to enter the U.S, combating corruption in the program, and making sure that Americans were not discriminated against. On April 18, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order restricting the H-1 B visa to give hiring preference to American workers and enacting stronger enforcement of laws requiring the use of American-made materials in federal projects. Experts on the H-1 B visa supported his order.

July 2017. The Trump administration changed the focus of Citizenship and Immigration Services from "integration," as it was under the Obama Administration, to "assimilation." This could be seen in the renaming of a grant program that started under the Obama administration from the "Citizenship and Integration Grant Program" to the "Citizenship and Assimilation Grant Program."

September 24, 2017. The Trump administration established a new travel ban that affected 8 countries — Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and certain individuals from Venezuela. According to the U.S. government, these countries fell under the travel ban due to not sharing information about terrorism and the people applying to the U.S. In December 2017, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to fully enforce the travel ban despite left-wing opposition, and the State Department began fully implementing it a few days later. On April 10, 2018, President Trump signed an order to remove Chad from the list. On June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court issued a final ruling in favor of the travel ban, in a major victory for the administration.

April 22, 2019. President Trump signed a memorandum ordering his administration to find ways to reduce visa overstay rates.

July 2, 2019. The Trump Administration began efforts to impose fines on illegal aliens who disobeyed deportation orders and remained in the U.S.

July 22, 2019. The Trump Administration announced it would fully enforce a 1996 law by implementing a policy of quickly deporting, without a trial, illegals in the U.S. for less than two years.

September 29, 2017. President Trump signed an order to allow up to only 45,000 refugees into the country in 2018, the lowest cap since the Refugee Act of 1980 was signed and a 59% decrease compared to the cap that President Obama had proposed for 2017.

December 2, 2017. The Trump administration pulled out of the Global Compact on Migration a United Nations agreement, due to its infringing on U.S. sovereignty and its immigration policies. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley stated that "our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans, alone," and that "the global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty."

President Trump signed a memorandum that will finally enforce a 23-year-old provision requiring sponsors of legal immigrants to reimburse the government for any social services the immigrant uses in the United States. The provision was part of a welfare reform package signed into law in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton, but which has not been consistently enforced until now. Under the provision and President Trump's memorandum, future immigrant sponsors will be required to sign an affidavit ensuring financial responsibility for the sponsored immigrant. Additionally, the memo creates a collection mechanism to recover any needed funds from the sponsor.

President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum directing his administration to curb the ongoing asylum abuse occurring at our borders. In the Presidential Memo, the President directed his administration to propose regulations that would: streamline court proceedings for aliens who pass initial credible fear determinations; adjudicate all asylum applications in immigration courts within 180 days of filing; require fees for asylum applications and work permit applications; bar aliens who have entered (or attempted to enter) the country illegally from receiving provisional work permits prior to being approved for relief; and immediately revoke the work authorization of aliens who receive final removal orders.

December 15, 2017. The Trump administration added new requirements for countries participating in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program to help vet travelers entering the U.S. and to prevent visa overstays in the U.S.

In 2017, the Trump administration announced it would end "Temporary Protected Status" for Sudan, Nicaragua, and Haiti. The State Department also reportedly paved the way for the U.S. government to revoke additional TPS protections in 2018.

Late May 2017. The State Department introduced new and much stricter rules for vetting all people seeking a visa to enter the U.S., with the introduction of social media vetting being among the changes. Trump moved to make these measures permanent on August 3, 2017.

June 21, 2017. President Trump signed an executive order, rescinding a guideline signed by former President Obama to speed up vetting times for people seeking visas, to improve vetting standards.

August 2017. The Trump Administration continued strengthening the vetting of immigrants, such as requiring some to prove their ability to return to their home countries, if necessary, to crack down on visa overstays, and requiring some of those seeking green cards to conduct an in-person interview.

It was reported that the Trump Administration, due to the president's previous executive orders, had ended Obama's "home free magnet" policy, where illegal immigrants who did not commit a serious crime (other than crossing the border illegally) did not need to fear deportation because ICE needed to gain permission from the Field Office Director before deporting them; and the Trump Administration expanded the use of expedited removal proceedings, thus, illegal immigrants "without violent criminal histories" could be arrested and deported.

By the beginning of 2019, the Trump Administration was able to reduce the number of countries "that habitually refuse to take back immigrants whom the U.S. is trying to deport" from 23 to 9. He did this by enacting visa sanctions on countries that continued to refuse to accept deportees until they changed their policy. Also, the number of "at-risk" countries fell from 62 to 24.

It was reported in June 2017 that the Trump Administration began repatriating illegal immigrants given "administrative closure" by the Obama Administration, a form of "quasi-amnesty." Due to this change in policy, as it was reported a month later in July 2017, the number of deportation cases in Los Angeles alone rose 60%.

June 2017. The Trump Administration ended the Family Case Management Program, which allowed certain illegal immigrants seeking asylum to stay out of detention centers.

President Trump has appointed several strong conservatives to positions where they can have an impact on immigration enforcement. He appointed Thomas Homan, someone with a reputation for enforcing immigration laws, as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On January 31, President Trump appointed Ronald Vitiello, who was endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council to lead U.S. Border Patrol. In late March 2017, President Trump appointed Scott Lloyd, a strong conservative supportive of the president's immigration policies, to lead the HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement. President Trump appointed two conservatives on immigration issues to senior positions in the Department of Homeland Security. March 2018— President Trump appointed Andrew Veprek, a White House aide described as having strong pro-American immigration views, as a deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. July 2018, President Trump appointed John Zadrozny, a White House aid opposed to mass migration, to serve on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff where he would influence matters related to the department's migration policies. The USCIS worked to implement President Trump's agenda, and in June 2019, the president appointed Ken Cuccinelli, a strong conservative, to lead the agency.

November 13, 2018. The U.S. voted against a UN General Assembly resolution praising the UNHCR and endorsing the Global Compact for Refugees — the latter of which the U.S. announced it would withdraw from — because it conflicted with American "sovereign interests." That resolution had previously been approved by consensus in the 60 years of its existence before the Trump administration requested a vote on the matter, and the U.S. was the only country to vote against the resolution. The Trump Administration continued its opposition to the globalist Global Compact on Migration in 2018, voting against it during UN votes on December 10, 17 and 19. Numerous other countries began following the Trump Administration's lead in opposing the migration compact.

June 20, 2018. While President Trump caved to the Left and the mainstream media by signing an executive order to prevent the separation of illegal migrant family’s while being detained, the order kept the administration's "zero- tolerance" enforcement policy in place, and it directed the Justice Department to challenge a 2015 court settlement that required the federal government to release illegal migrants with children. In a court filing on June 29, 2018, the DOJ announced a new policy where it would seek to detain illegal migrant families indefinitely, and on September 6, 2018, the DHS and HHS proposed a rule to allow them to detain illegal migrant families long-term.

March 26, 2018. The Commerce Department announced it would re-add a question to the U.S. Census asking U.S. residents if they are U.S. citizens.

July 11, 2019. President Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to estimate the number of U.S. citizens through existing government records.

May 23, 2019. President Trump signed a memorandum directing his administration to enforce a provision found in two laws enacted in 1996 requiring the sponsors of legal immigrants to reimburse the government for any welfare benefits used by those immigrants. In June 2019, USCIS announced it had begun implementing the memo. On August 12, 2019, the Trump Administration issued the finalized rule implementing the policy.

February 7, 2019. President Trump signed a proclamation extending a previous order signed in November 2018 that banned migrants illegally entering the U.S. from applying for asylum. On May 8, 2019, President Trump again extended the order through a proclamation.

By 2019, President Trump's 2017 travel ban had ended nearly all immigration from the eight impacted countries.