Had American nativists ever endeavored to draft a “Declaration of Discrimination,” it would read a lot like the radical modern plan known as “Project 2025.”
This white nationalist vision for America, written and promoted by several former members of the Trump administration, is “standing back and standing by” as a ruthless roadmap to a future that Americans must reject. It isn’t Trump’s plan, but it is a plan made for Trump, outlining strategies to accomplish some of his biggest policy goals.
Crafted by the influential Heritage Foundation and more than 100 other prominent right-wing organizations, Project 2025 serves as a conservative guidebook with extreme policy proposals to expand presidential powers and establish a federal workforce replete with partisan loyalists. It’s a systematic plan to dismantle America as we know it and undermine the quality of life for millions of people at the expense of ideological extremists.
The term “radical” cannot be overemphasized in this proposed agenda for a potential second Trump term, much of it overlapping with the Republican nominee’s official campaign pronouncements: eliminating the Education Department, enacting mass deportation of long-term immigrants and reversing restrictions on greenhouse gases, among other ideas. In his 2022 speech at a Heritage Foundation conference, Trump acknowledged the plan by stating: “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”
Central among its many flaws, the 900-page policy plan makes clear that its authors feel threatened by progress in the civil rights movement and want to create a country that allows for more discrimination and less equity by rolling back the hard-fought victories of women, LGBTQ+ people and communities of color. The president of the Heritage Foundation himself recently stated their goal for immigration policy through the plan, saying, “We need to have the biggest mass deportation system ever.”
The proposal has gained unsettling traction among Trump’s base. At last month’s Republican National Convention, “Mass Deportation Now!” signs were visible as speakers demonized and verbally attacked immigrants and promoted mass deportation raids similar to the anti-Latino policy from the 1950s known as “Operation Wetback” that deported both undocumented Latinos as well as Latinos born in the United States.
Some of former President Trump’s closest advisors and administration alumni — at least 140 of whom are among the Project 2025 coalition members — are credited as masterminds of the deportation plan. The proposed deportation force outlined in the project would include the National Guard, state and local police, other federal police agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary, the military, who would go door-to-door to round up and deport an estimated 15 million people.
While the former president has attempted to play dumb when asked about the broader policy proposals of Project 2025, he has not distanced himself from that element of the plan. In a Time Magazine interview and elsewhere this year, Trump suggested he would use the U.S. military to round up people, tacitly agreeing to Make America Great Again by moving us back to the dark ages of racism.
On immigration alone, the plan calls for:
■ Mass detention and family separation by eliminating benefits and transferring the care of young children from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Homeland Security.
■ Deportation of Dreamers and parents of U.S. citizens through the elimination of family-based immigration and DACA.
■ Raiding schools, hospitals and religious institutions by removing current prohibitions on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers acting in “sensitive zones.”
■ Suspending due process that currently allows immigrants a day in court by expanding the use of expedited deportations to the “fullest extent” nationwide and allowing immediate expulsion of migrants in the case of immigration court backlogs caused by consistent underfunding from government officials.
■ Creating a “show me your papers” type mandate requiring ICE to remove, arrest and detain long-term immigrants without a warrant. The proposed plan authorizes local law enforcement to participate in border security actions, penalizing jurisdictions that don’t comply.
■ Using the U.S. military to crack down on any migrants arriving at the border and potentially engaging in war with Mexico.
■ Restricting legal immigration by barring certain groups or nationalities from accessing work and student visas, eliminating DACA, family-based immigration, TPS and visas for victims of crime and reducing the ability to apply for asylum.
Sadly, this extremist immigration policy is just one component of the manifesto that also attacks health care, education, overtime pay, student loans and reproductive rights, while allowing more discrimination, pollution and price-gouging as proponents go to unprecedented lengths to reshape America into a country that works for them, but not the rest of us.
Such policies not only hurt the Latino community in Colorado, but attack the rights and freedoms of all Americans, including women, low-income families, the LBGTQ+ community, people of color, immigrants from all nations and countless others.
There’s no question that Project 2025 will take us backward as a society by expanding on many of the worst policies we witnessed in the first Trump administration. We cannot allow that to happen — no matter who wins the next election — and must continue working to stop these egregious and inhumane proposals from taking root and destroying the lives of millions in pursuit of the American Dream.
Alex Sánchez is the founder and CEO of Voces Unidas Action Fund, an immigrant-created advocacy organization based in Colorado’s Western Slope.