Wretchardthecat has given us a sage analysis of the MAGA agenda:

The reason the MAGA initiatives looked so disjointed to the media is they were component parts of a vast alternative worldview now coming into sight. Like the five blind men and the elephant the progressives are only now realizing the aspects of a single larger foe.

Immigration control is a key feature of the MAGA initiatives: closing the border, removing illegal immigrants, keeping non-citizens from voting and stopping federal funds from going to so called non-government organizations who were bringing in millions of immigrants who overwhelmed housing, welfare, and educational budgets, committed crimes, and threatened national security. 

This week, the Administration obtained some substantial victories on this score.

The Catholic Church, which was a huge recipient of federal funds fueling the immigrant express, has finally shut down refugee and migrant aid operations. Shutting off this spigot was key to the Administration’s immigration policy.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had to make the gut-wrenching decision this week to end our work with the federal government to resettle refugees and coordinate support services on the government’s behalf for unaccompanied children entering the United States. Our programs -- among the nation’s largest and longest-serving refugee resettlement efforts -- will shut down by the end of the fiscal year.

This is a painful end to a life-sustaining partnership the Catholic Church in the U.S. has had with our government and that has spanned decades across administrations of both political parties.”

The retreat comes after voters -- including many Catholics -- picked President Donald Trump to end the federal government’s very unpopular policy of importing workers, renters, and consumers into the nation’s communities.

That ruthless economic policy had imposed poverty, lower wages, higher rents, and chaotic diversity on many American communities which were already suffering from the loss of jobs and investment. The church-backed policy also led to the deaths of thousands of migrants.

The Administration now requires illegal immigrants to register and will enforce a law subjecting non-registrants to criminal penalties, fast track deportations, and permanent bars to adjusting to legal status for those who refuse to leave. A federal judge has determined this policy shift is legal because the groups challenging it lacked standing (a personal stake in the outcome) to do so. 

The Associated Press (AP) on Thursday said the registration requirements take effect on Friday and also mandates those individuals carry documentation.

The outlet continued:

Judge Trevor Neil McFadden -- a Trump appointee -- sided with the administration, which had argued that officials were simply enforcing a requirement that already existed for everyone who is in the country but isn’t an American citizen. McFadden’s ruling didn’t go into the substance of those arguments but rested largely on the technical issue of whether the groups pushing to stop the requirement had standing to pursue their claims. He ruled they didn’t.

Immediately after the ruling, Department of Homeland Security officials emphasized in a news release that the deadline to register for those who’ve already been in the country for 30 days or more is Friday and that going forward, the registration requirement would be enforced to the fullest.

In February, Breitbart News reported that Trump was reviving the enforcement of a 1940 law requiring migrants to register their names and fingerprints with federal agencies.

If they fail to do so, those individuals could face criminal penalties resulting in a possible fast-track to deportation. They could also be barred from becoming legal.

Immigrants ordered deported will now face substantial fines and confiscation of property if they fail to timely depart: 

By Reuters

The Trump administration plans to fine migrants under deportation orders up to $998 a day if they fail to leave the United States and to seize their property if they do not pay, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The fines stem from a 1996 law that was enforced for the first time in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. The Trump administration plans to apply the penalties retroactively for up to five years, which could result in fines of more than $1 million, a senior Trump official said, requesting anonymity to discuss non-public plans.

The Trump administration is also considering seizing the property of immigrants who do not pay the fines, according to government emails reviewed by Reuters.

In response to questions from Reuters, U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that immigrants in the U.S. illegally should use a mobile app formerly known as CBP One -- rebranded as CBP Home under Trump -- to “self deport and leave the country now.”

“If they don’t, they will face the consequences,” McLaughlin said. “This includes a fine of $998 per day for every day that the illegal alien overstayed their final deportation order.”

The sight of foreign students harassing their classmates, leading anti-American and anti-Israeli demonstrations at colleges, and disrupting speakers and classroom work there is being met with, not only clampdowns on funding for schools that have tolerated this, but cancellation of visas for 300 students who were engaged in such actions. The most notorious of these campus disrupters has been Columbia University’s activist Mahmoud Khalil, for whom the usuals have drummed up support from those who know no better,.A federal court this week ruled that he can be deported.

Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be forced out of the country as a national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled Friday after lawyers argued the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” satisfied requirements for deportation, Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said at a hearing in Jena.

Comans said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”

Perhaps the cases which have received the most media attention are those involving Kilmar Garcia and the deportation of Tren de Aragua members, because these cases were considered by the Supreme Court. As Bill Shipley (publishing on X and in his substack as Shipwreckedcrew) so ably notes, the media (on both sides of the aisle) have garbled the rulings and unfairly characterized the work and rationales of Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett. There’s nothing terribly unusual about this. Unless you are a lawyer or, perhaps, law student, the details of hard-fought cases are less dramatic than reporters would like -- after all, they want to hold your interest and fire you up. I’ll link to his work here, but on the assumption you may not want to wade through so much detail, I’ll summarize what I consider his most accurate reporting and analysis of these cases.

Kilmer Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, which operates in Mexico, the U.S., and Central America. He had been ordered deported after a hearing before an immigration judge but he had received a withdrawal of removal preventing his deportation in 2019 on the grounds that if he returned to his home country of El Salvador he’d be killed by rivals (the 18th Street Gang) of the MS-13 gang. The Administration overlooked this order when with others he was deported to El Salvador and placed in their maximum detention jail. The District Court ordered his return by a date which passed during a stay of the proceedings which had been granted (and the stay thus made ineffective) by Chief Justice Roberts. The Supreme Court found unclear the Judge’s order that the government “facilitate and effectuate” Garcia’s release from El Salvadorean custody. It’s clear, however, that no matter what you’ve heard or read, it was not an order requiring he be returned to the U.S. 

Shipley suggests the government has two options available to it: Garcia is no longer in danger from MS-13 in El Salvador as Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele has already rounded them up, so the government should move to reopen the case in the immigration court and get the withdrawal of removal order deleted, or it can send a U.S. immigration judge to our embassy in El Salvador have the hearing there and delete the order. After that order is no longer in effect, Garcia can then be released into El Salvador as he would have been in 2019 but for the immigration court then accepting his fear of assassination.

The second most publicized immigration case is Judge James E. Boasberg’s case involving deportations of members of Tren de Aragua. The Supreme Court halted Boasberg’s efforts to stop removal of these gang members. The issues before the Court were where and how individuals ordered removed under the AEA (Alien Enemies Act) may challenge the deportation. The majority vacated two restraining orders by the Judge which prevented the U.S. from using the AEA to remove any person in its custody. Instead, the Court said these cases must proceed as habeas corpus proceedings which must be filed where the claimant is in custody and that any individual subject to an AEA proclamation as an alien enemy has a “due process” right to a habeas hearing before removal. Lest you envision this being a long-drawn-out O.J. Simpson-type criminal trial, Shipley sets you straight. These are simple, everyday-type matters, often decided on pleadings alone. The only issues are whether these men are Venezuelan citizens, whether they are at least 14 years old, and whether or not they are members of this gang.

“Due process” in these cases consist of no more than a right to notice and an opportunity to be heard before deportation.

I said a while ago that the President will win most if not all of these immigration cases, and that prediction seems to be holding up.

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