The Department of Homeland Security published a set of memos today that outline the agency's plans for mass deportation.
The new guidelines will undo Obama-era policy that prioritized violent criminals for deportation and instruct agents to deport virtually every immigrant.
The memos instruct all agents, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to identify, capture and quickly deport every undocumented immigrant they encounter.
The memos require undocumented immigrants caught entering the country to be placed in detention until their cases are resolved, increase the ability of local police to help in immigration enforcement, call for the hiring of 10,000 more immigration agents and allow planning to begin on an expansion of the border wall between the United States and Mexico.
Trump and the department have the authority to set their own guidelines and priorities, but building a wall and hiring a deportation force to implement those guidelines will require funding appropriated by Congress.
Will Congress actually fund a border wall and deportation force?
Out of the all the things is Congress is currently being asked to do, from repealing Obamacare to funding the federal government before a continuing resolution expires in April, a border bill may be the only thing that actually has a chance of happening.
It wouldn't surprise me if a border wall and deportation bill is the only significant thing Congress does this year or next. Whether or not such a bill could survive a filibuster in the Senate, and whether Republicans would be willing to kill the filibuster to fund a deportation force, is another story.
For all of Donald Trump's talk about violent criminals crossing the border, these new guidelines will create space for criminals by placing them on equal footing with innocents. It will also give citizen criminals leverage over immigrants.
This could be Trump's first self-inflicted economic wound as the agricultural and service industries crumble under the loss of a significant portion of their labor force.