Hardline Migration Policy Risks Eroding Democracy

In his second term, President Donald Trump has expanded hardline migration policies, mirroring efforts by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Italy. Rhetoric of a migrant “invasion” has been backed by a slew of executive orders and directives aimed at punishing sanctuary jurisdictions, limiting the legal arrival of migrants, restricting protected areas, ending birthright citizenship, and enacting mass deportations.

The populist right is ascendant across Western democracies and is committed to enforcing restrictive migration policies once in power. But hardline policies will do more than reduce migration—they risk eroding core democratic tenets and entrenching authoritarian power.

Deals Over Principles

Bilateral deals designed to curb migration have become a common policy in the Global North. Last year, the European Union (EU) signed strategic pacts with several nondemocratic origin and transit countries, including Egypt, Mauritania, and Tunisia. Similar to the notorious EU-Turkey pact, which provided €9 billion to Turkey in exchange for holding Syrian refugees, these agreements allocate resources to combat smuggling, reinforce checkpoints, develop security projects, and provide patrolling equipment and training to deter migration to Europe.

Despite concerns that such agreements hurt migrants and bolster authoritarian regimes at Europe’s borders, 15 EU member states released a statement ahead of the June 2024 European Parliament elections calling for the development of more “mutually beneficial” partnerships to outsource migration control. Similar policies are occurring at the national level as well, as Italy considers expanding its asylum processing centers beyond Albania, and Spain firms up plans to expand its cooperation with Mauritania later this year.

The Trump administration has brokered and expanded similar agreements with several Latin American countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and Panama, aiming to increase deportations and secure the border.

The pacts with Mexico and El Salvador exemplify the administration’s approach, coupling economic concessions with policies designed to deter migration. In February, Mexico sent 10,000 troops to the border to stop migrants from crossing into the United States, in a bid to convince the Trump administration to remove tariffs.

El Salvador has been involved in one of the administration’s most controversial migration deals. On March 14, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in an executive order to combat the “invasion of the United States by Tren De Aragua,” a Venezuelan gang. The act expedites removal procedures and limits detainees’ ability to contest their case in court. The act has only been invoked three times in U.S. history, notoriously during World War II when it enabled the incarceration of over 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry in internment camps, including U.S. citizens.

Meanwhile, El Salvador is confining those deported under the act in a maximum-security prison—CECOT—that has been called a judicial black hole akin to forced disappearance where inmates have virtually no access to family or legal counsel.

In its implementation of deportations under the act, the Trump administration has refused to honor judicial rulings to stop deportation flights to El Salvador and uphold detainee rights to due process. By ignoring and retaliating against judicial rulings, and obstructing judicial oversight of deportations, the administration is encroaching on key democratic principles: the separation of powers and the rule of law.

Confinement without access to family or judicial review at CECOT, not to mention the prison’s horrendous conditions, which include overcrowding and violence against inmates, makes the prison’s use in U.S. migration policy outright inhumane. Even those supportive of hardline migration policies should be concerned by President Trump’s statements that he intends to deport U.S. citizens to El Salvador where they could suffer similar treatment.

Policies like these set a dangerous precedent and will erode trust in the government. They signal to U.S. citizens that due process, judicial oversight, and basic humanitarian standards are negotiable rather than core, non-transferable obligations that U.S, leaders must abide by.

In the United States, where the separation of powers and the rule of law are foundational, detention and removal decisions must remain subject to impartial judicial review, whether these decisions come from the executive or legislative branch. Nobody under the care of the United States should disappear to an autocratic country, whether citizen or immigrant, convicted criminal or innocent.

Democracy Put to the Test

As conflicts, climate change, and general instability continue to drive migration, democracies must resist the temptation to adopt reactionary measures that compromise democracy by externalizing migration control to states with endemic corruption and abuse. Instead, they should focus on collaborative, rights-based approaches that address the root causes of migration and create durable solutions that promote the well-being of migrants and the communities they migrate to.

Migration is at the heart of American exceptionalism and identity, yet dark chapters such as Japanese internment show that prejudice and demagoguery can spiral into poor policy with little regard of those affected.

The question is not whether migrants can be stopped, but whether democracies will uphold their highest values—due process, the separation of powers, respect for human rights and the rule of law at home and abroad—in the face of rising far-right and populist leadership. Without this commitment, democracies risk embracing hardline strategies that erode their very foundations.

Jesús E. Rojas Venzor is a 2024-25 IGCC dissertation fellow and a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at UC San Diego.

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