Dramatic scenes have come to define the second Donald Trump administration's immigration policy: federal troops patrolling the streets of American cities, agents snatching international students on video, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants disappeared to a brutal Salvadoran prison.
Behind those scenes, Trump is reshaping the country's immigration bureaucracy. In just its first 100 days, the second Trump administration had "taken 181 immigration-specific executive actions," found the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI), "a sixfold increase over the fewer than 30 actions during the same period in Trump's first term." Visa processing and bureaucratic rulemaking don't grab as much attention as harsh, highly visible enforcement actions, but they're making it harder for immigrants to work, learn, and live in the United States.
