President Donald Trump is following through on a policy put forward by Project 2025 that calls for federal law enforcement to investigate, and potentially criminally prosecute, local authorities who refuse to cooperate with his administration’s mass deportation plans. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order — and his Department of Justice released a subsequent memo — that put the Project 2025 proposal into practice.
Project 2025 is a sprawling transition plan to provide policy and staffing recommendations for the new Trump administration. The effort, organized by The Heritage Foundation in collaboration with more than 100 conservative organizations, drew significant scrutiny during the 2024 election, prompting Trump and longtime adviser Stephen Miller to attempt to distance themselves from it. Since Trump’s win, however, he has stocked his administration with at least 16 contributors to Project 2025’s policybook, Mandate for Leadership, including Miller, who will serve as his deputy chief of staff for policy.
Mandate’s chapter on the Department of Justice is written by Gene Hamilton, who served as the vice president and general counsel of Miller’s America First Legal Foundation. In it, Hamilton — now White House senior counsel — argues that the DOJ should “initiate legal action against local officials—including District Attorneys—who deny American citizens the ‘equal protection of the laws’ by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions.” He elaborated that his proposal is “particularly” appropriate for “jurisdictions that refuse to enforce the law against criminals” due to “political considerations” like “immigration status.”
According to The Washington Post, America First Legal sent “nearly 250 letters” to local officials in late December similarly threatening that the upcoming Trump administration would “investigate and potentially prosecute state and local officials who don’t cooperate with mass deportation efforts.”
Two of the Trump administration’s new policy announcements largely mirror Hamilton’s language in Mandate. An executive order Trump issued on the first day of his second term targeted so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions” — cities or states that refuse to cooperate with at least some aspects of federal immigration enforcement — to ensure that they do not receive federal funding. The order then commanded the attorney general and secretary of homeland security to “evaluate and undertake any other lawful actions, criminal or civil, that they deem warranted based on any such jurisdiction’s practices that interfere with the enforcement of Federal law.” Trump’s EO is one of ten executive actions he took on his first day in office intended to radically limit both legal and unauthorized immigration.
Two days after Trump’s day one blitz, media outlets reported on a memo issued to the DOJ by acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove that referenced Trump’s executive order and expanded on it. “Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests,” the memo stated. It added that the DOJ “shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution,” threatening that the investigations could result in charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
In reporting on the DOJ memo, NBC News noted that there “is no precedent for prosecuting state or local officials who are deemed to have resisted federal immigration enforcement.” The Associated Press wrote that “legal experts said that while prosecutions are possible, they doubted the charges would have any traction in court.”
Project 2025 is all but guaranteed to leave a major footprint in the second Trump administration. In December, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said “there’s no doubt” Trump would implement much of the effort’s agenda. Trump selected one of Project 2025’s top architects, Russ Vought, to reprise his role from Trump’s first term as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. In undercover recordings, Vought claimed he and his Project 2025 collaborators had prepared “about 350 different documents” for the next administration, including plans to facilitate the “largest deportation in history.”
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is listed as a contributor to Mandate as well, and has pledged to carry out Trump’s mass deportation plans and threatened local officials with arrest. “I’ve got no problem prosecuting a politician,” Homan said in December. Several days later, speaking with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Homan suggested he would “arrest the mayor or governor who’s given his staff explicit instructions to impede us and to hide from us.”