Securing America’s Promise: Building a Credible and Humane Future for Interior Immigration Enforcement

For years, politicians have justified harsh immigration policies in the name of public safety, treating immigration less as a policy challenge than as a political weapon. The approach often results in immigration policies that are ineffective, overly punitive, or disconnected from the problems they claim to solve.

The Laken Riley Act, passed last year with bipartisan support, is an example. The law, named for a 22-year-old student who was killed by someone who entered the country unlawfully, directs federal officials to detain and deport undocumented immigrants who have merely been accused of certain low-level crimes. Nearly 50 Democrats joined Republicans to pass the bill, even though a policy like this would do little to prevent the very tragedy it’s named after.

President Trump returned to power in part by campaigning on a similar message of public safety. He promised to go after “the worst of the worst,” and pitched his crackdown as a vital check against violent offenders and gangs. But once in office, his policies cast a far wider net. The result: immigrants regardless of legal status are less likely to report crimes or seek help, which makes all of us less safe.

As an organization of immigration policy and legal experts, we recognize this pattern. In 1986, Congress passed a major law that aimed to stop unauthorized immigrants by cracking down on employers and boosting border security, yet the undocumented population kept growing. By 1996, at the height of the “tough on crime” era and with a major election looming, both parties were racing to look even tougher on immigrants in the name of public safety.

President Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 into law, promising it would crack down on undocumented immigrants and “criminal aliens” not just at the border, but inside the country. This approach did little to curb border crossings, which remained high for the next decade, and instead ended up punishing immigrants of all statuses while stripping away due process protections.

What those laws did do was make it harder for people to come into compliance, limit what immigration judges could do, and create barriers even for people married to U.S. citizens. People stayed because leaving meant they couldn’t return, and there was no realistic path to legal status anyway. Some Americans have assumed that undocumented immigrants could fix their status if they tried. For the last thirty years, that simply hasn’t been true.

The same enforcement tools created by these laws are now being used by Trump. That legal framework, combined with his policies, have pushed the immigration enforcement system toward a critical turning point. One path leads toward expanded mass deportation, backed by an unprecedented infusion of congressional funding and reaching deeper into American communities. With these resources in place, the system is likely to produce years of disruption, economic strain, and an expanded surveillance apparatus powerful enough to threaten everyone’s freedoms, not just immigrants.

The other path leads back to the pre-Trump status quo—nearly 13 million undocumented immigrants living in limbo, most of whom have been here since before 2009, with no path to legal status and no real consequences for not having it. Workers will continue to be exploited, families separated, and immigration will remain a political cudgel rather than a challenge met with real policy solutions.

Both paths fail for the same reason: they rely on detention and deportation as the primary tools of immigration enforcement, an approach that has consistently fallen short. But mass deportation and the status quo aren’t the only options. We believe a better system is possible.

Since Trump took office, confidence in immigration enforcement has plummeted. By October 2025, nearly half of all Hispanic residents reported that mass deportation efforts made them feel less safe. As of early 2026, as much as 65 percent of the country believed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had gone too far, and half of American polled supported calls to “Abolish ICE.” This is no surprise given what communities across the U.S. have experienced over the last 17 months.

This moment offers an opening. Congress could use it to replace the broken laws that got us here with something that actually works.

Our organization, the American Immigration Council, just published a new framework for what a better system could look like. “Restoring Credibility and Humanity: A New Framework for Immigration Enforcement” offers policymakers a roadmap as they develop reforms so that they aren’t just opposing mass deportation, but offering a viable vision forward.

What are the core principles in this new framework?

We propose an interior immigration enforcement system based on four core principles: Compliance, Safety, Proportionality, and Accountability.

These principles are grounded in the belief that a credible and humane immigration enforcement system is the only way to truly preserve the public safety and well-being of American communities in a way that lives up to our values and protects the rule of law.

We envision a system that distinguishes between people who pose a real public safety threat and those whose immigration violations can be resolved with proportionate civil consequences, rather than detention and deportation. There should be consequences for breaking immigration laws, including deportation. But the consequence should fit the violation, not treat every case the same.

It should also create pathways to permanent legal status for people who want to come into compliance with the law. The measure of a good immigration system isn’t how many people it deports. It’s whether the rules are fair enough that people want to follow them.

Our framework focuses exclusively on interior enforcement policy. This is just one of the broader fixes that are needed, including changes to the legal immigration system to better serve America’s workforce needs, as well as new asylum processes and effective border management. Other experts have proposed necessary solutions to these systems. But without interior immigration reform, the U.S. government risks further destabilizing communities around the country, making us all less safe, and undermining credibility of the rule of law itself.

What reforms do we propose?

Compliance: A system that emphasizes compliance must offer people who want to follow the rules an opportunity to do so; rewarding them when they meet requirements, and imposing consequences if they do not. Instead, the current system gives undocumented immigrants every reason to avoid the police because any interaction could lead to detention and deportation, regardless of how long they’ve been here or whether they have committed a crime.

Congress should create a new process for long-time undocumented residents who come into contact with immigration agents. Instead of facing deportation, these people should be referred to a different process handled by an agency other than ICE, with narrower civil penalties such as fines, mandated payment of back taxes, and ongoing monitoring; penalties that take into account their years in the U.S. and their specific immigration violation. Should they successfully demonstrate their willingness and ability to comply with this process, they would be able to apply for permanent legal status.

Under this system, agencies like ICE that have the authority to remove people from the U.S. would be left to focus their resources on recent entrants who don’t qualify for protection and actual public safety threats, while long-time community members would be safe from the fear that any interaction with law enforcement would lead to detention or deportation.

Safety: Safety is built around the understanding that law enforcement protects a community best when it can work with the community, and not against it. In practice, this means that Congress should mandate that immigration agencies focus harsher enforcement such as deportation on non-citizens with recent, serious and violent offenses; rather than those with dated and low level offenses. This would require the agency to steward its resources carefully and ensure that those who pose a threat to communities receive the most attention.

We also call on Congress to rethink the current model for federal-state cooperation on immigration. The primary such tool in law is the “287(g)” program, which authorizes local police in some states to work as ICE agents. The effects of that policy are already visible. In states like Florida and Texas, some immigrants who call 911 for help, or who report domestic violence, have ended up being detained. This may increase immigration arrests, but it undermines trust and makes communities less safe. This is why we call for a new model—one where the federal government offers financial support to states (not local police) for supportive services in immigrant communities alongside far more targeted enforcement against noncitizens who pose violent or recent, serious threats.

Proportionality: In this newly envisioned system, there will still be many people who end up in removal proceedings facing deportation. But unlike today, under the Council’s framework, removal proceedings would allow for more proportionate consequences for violations of the law.

In the current system, once an immigration judge determines that a person is both removable and not eligible for a narrow set of relief options, the only option available to the judge is ordering deportation. The current system has only two settings: do nothing, or deport someone and upend their entire life. That all-or-nothing approach is what made mass deportation possible.

The Council’s framework proposes that once an immigration judge determines that a person may be deported, the judge can address the violation of civil immigration law with proportionate penalties, such as fines, community service, or probation.

A judge facing the decision whether to deport a green card holder for a misdemeanor marijuana offense would not be forced to treat them the same as a recent immigrant with a serious felony. The latter would likely be ordered deported, while the former could be offered the opportunity to pay a tailored penalty and be permitted to remain.

To keep the system as a whole proportionate, we also recommend that fewer people face detention, especially vulnerable people, like pregnant women, who should be exempted from detention except in rare circumstances; and that anyone held in an immigration jail receive basic due process, with a bond hearing and an appointed lawyer.

Accountability: Finally, a credible and humane immigration enforcement system must be accountable to the public and to Congress. While impunity among immigration officials has been an issue for years, the raids of American cities, leading to civil unrest and the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, among others, demonstrate that an unaccountable enforcement system makes us all less safe.

We propose that Congress lift limits on lawsuits brought against officers who violate civil rights and restore a power that Congress stripped away in 1996; This would enable federal courts to stop openly unlawful immigration enforcement policies and practices. Without these changes, future administrations will be able to violate the law, safe in the knowledge that no court can stop them.

We also propose that Congress create a bipartisan, independent commission with the power to investigate serious or willful misconduct inside immigration enforcement agencies. This commission would operate within the legislative branch, which would better insulate it from interference. It would be empowered to file lawsuits to address serious violations of federal law. This would be paired with legislative reforms which strengthen internal agency watchdogs, ensuring that accountability is a core part of any future immigration enforcement efforts; keeping us all safe.

Taken together, this framework of compliance, safety, proportionality, and accountability not only offers lawmakers a concrete policy vision of what ICE or another immigration enforcement agency might look like after Trump, but also aims to meet the American public where they are. After all, most Americans still want an immigration enforcement system that enforces clear and fair rules, keeps communities safe, and lives up to American values. And in order to do that, we need to make serious, lasting change; a system that addresses not just the present crisis, but the needs of our future.

Read the original article at Securing America’s Promise.