On January 20, Trump issued an executive action titled “Guaranteeing the states protection against invasion.” The New York Times reported that the order would “bar asylum for people newly arriving at the southern border."

Trump’s proclamation states that migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border “are restricted from invoking provisions” of the Immigration and Nationality Act, “including, but not limited to” the section guaranteeing the right to claim asylum.

By contrast, Project 2025 did not seek a full ban at the southern border but did suggest a dramatic restriction of rights for asylum-seekers. Under the heading of “Asylum reform,” it proposed that the “standard for a credible fear of persecution should be raised and aligned to the standard for asylum.” In general, asylum-seekers are given a chance during an initial interview to demonstrate a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country, but must meet a higher standard later in the process. Project 2025 sought to impose stricter standards earlier in the process, which likely would have made more asylum-seekers vulnerable to expedited removal.

Mandate also recommended that Congress “eliminate” protections for “particular social group[s]”, such as LGBTQ people, or “at minimum” clarify that “gang violence and domestic violence are not grounds for asylum."

Trump’s order goes further, purporting to ban all asylum claims until he issues “a finding that the invasion at the southern border has ceased." According to the National Immigration Law Center, the order “stands in clear violation of U.S. federal law and the United States’ obligations under the international Refugee Convention."

On January 20, Trump also issued an executive order titled “Realigning the United States refugee admissions program.” The American Immigration Lawyers Association, an immigrant justice organization, wrote that the order “suspended the U.S. refugee program indefinitely.”

The language of Trump’s order itself is plain: “This order suspends the USRAP [United States Refugee Admissions Program] until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States."

The order adds that “entry into the United States of refugees under the USRAP be suspended” for at least 90 days, at which point the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security are instructed to issue a report “regarding whether resumption of entry of refugees into the United States under the USRAP would be in the interests of the United States.”

Project 2025 similarly described refugee admittance to the United States in apocalyptic and hyperbolic terms, claiming the Biden administration “engineered what is nothing short of a collapse of U.S. border security” and created “arguably the greatest humanitarian crisis in the modern era."

Although Mandate concluded that one “casualty” of this crisis would be the “current form” of USRAP, it didn’t call for a total suspension. Rather, it recommended “an indefinite curtailment of the number of USRAP refugee admissions.” Again, this is an extreme proposal on its own, but falls short of Trump’s Day 1 executive orders.

Trump issued another January 20 executive order, titled “Protecting the meaning and value of American Citizenship,” which seeks to end birthright citizenship provided by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. State attorneys general and civil rights organizations have sued to prevent the order from going into effect, and a federal judge referred to the Trump order as “a blatantly unconstitutional order.”

Here, Trump is again taking a more restrictionist approach than Project 2025, which doesn’t mention either “birthright citizenship” or the 14th Amendment in its policy book.

Although Mandate itself is silent on birthright citizenship, at least four Project 2025 partner organizations have sought to eliminate it for decades — including lead organizer The Heritage Foundation.

Alongside these other actions on January 20, Trump issued an executive order titled “Designating cartels and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.”

The order instructs the secretary of state, within 14 days, to coordinate with other members of the Cabinet “to make a recommendation regarding the designation of any cartel or other organization ... as a Foreign Terrorist Organization ... and/or a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” The order further states that the Trump administration will “invoke the Alien Enemies Act” to “expedite the removal of those who may be designated under this order.”

Here, Trump is again advancing a more extreme agenda than Project 2025, which calls for “dismantling domestic and international criminal enterprises” but doesn’t use the term “foreign terrorist organization." Mandate also does not call for the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, the authority under which Japanese Americans and others were held in internment camps during WWII.

Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar” and a former visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has advocated for designating drug cartels as terrorist groups. He is credited as a contributor in Mandate for Leadership.

Trump’s Day 1 executive orders touched nearly every aspect of U.S. immigration policy with an eye toward making the country more hostile to asylum-seekers, refugees, immigrants with lawful residence under humanitarian parole, or those who benefit from a host of temporary status protections. Despite the points of divergence described above, Trump’s orders and Project 2025’s proposals are in near-total agreement on the vast majority of his immigration plans, including:

• Resuming a policy that excludes asylum-seekers on grounds that they pose a public health risk, similar to a COVID-era policy known as Title 42.
• Expanding expedited removal for recent arrivals.
• Increasing capacity to detain migrants.
• Imposing sanctions on so-called “recalcitrant countries” which refuse to accept deportees.
• Expanding cooperation between federal immigration agencies and local law enforcement, especially through the 287(g) program.
• Removing Temporary Protected Status for immigrants living in the country with legal authorization.
• Punishing officials in so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions."
• Freezing funds to nongovernmental organizations that provide services to immigrants.
• Hiring more ICE and CBP officers.
• Deploying the military to the southern border to prevent unauthorized crossing and assist in immigration enforcement.
• Resuming the Remain in Mexico program, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which mandates that asylum-seekers stay in Mexico rather than the United States while waiting for adjudication of their claim.
• Eliminating alternatives to detention programs, sometimes derided as “catch-and-release.”
• Adding a citizenship question to the U.S. Census.

Reading Trump’s executive orders and the policy proposals outlined in Mandate for Leadership side-by-side highlights just how closely his administration is following the Project 2025 playbook.

In addition to staffing his administration with at least 17 figures with direct ties to Project 2025, Trump has followed the policy book’s recommendations on ramping up fossil fuel production, decimating the federal workforce, reversing anti-discrimination protections, and attempting to refuse to spend funds allocated by Congress. In all, a CNN study found that “of the 53 executive orders and actions from Trump’s first week in office found that more than two-thirds – 36 – evoke proposals outlined in ‘Mandate for Leadership.’”

After trying to publicly distance himself from Project 2025 during the campaign, Trump is now using its policy book as a template for his first weeks in office — and his actions on restricting immigration show his administration is poised to be even more extreme than those already radical proposals.