The Five Biggest Roadblocks to Trump's Immigration Agenda

Donald Trump will confront funding, legal challenges to turn campaign rhetoric into policy

- Michelle Hackman & Tarini Parti

President-elect Donald Trump has promised a crackdown on illegal immigration and significant changes to immigration laws. Now his advisers will contend with long-existing headwinds to turn Trump's campaign rhetoric into policy.

Here are five major roadblocks the incoming administration will face:

Immigration-court backlog

Most immigrants in the U.S. illegally can't be deported without a hearing in immigration court, where they have a chance to ask for asylum or another avenue to stay in the country. But immigration courts are so backlogged that hearings are being scheduled as far into the future as 2029.

While immigrants wait for their hearings, they are given work permits, allowing them to find legal employment inside the U.S. Trump and his allies argue this process is an important factor attracting migrants to come to the U.S. to seek asylum—even if they don't win their court cases.

Outside experts estimate that Congress would have to hire about 5,000 immigration judges—the system now has roughly 500—to efficiently sort through all existing cases as well as new ones.

Barring a large infusion of cash to hire more judges, the Trump administration could shuffle around whose hearings happen first, giving priority to people from certain countries or those with criminal histories. They could make it tougher for immigrants to delay their final hearings, which judges sometimes allow in some cases, to give immigrants more time to find lawyers to represent them.

Without a change in the law, most of the migrants who entered the country illegally during President Biden's term won't be legally deportable for years.

Lack of ICE agents