By Andy O’Brien
In 2022, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based public policy research institute called the Heritage Foundation released “Project 2025,” an initiative built on four pillars that provides a highly detailed transition plan for a Republican presidency. The four pillars are a policy guide – a Mandate for Leadership – intended for the next presidential administration, a database of personnel who could serve in the next Republican administration, training for that pool of candidates, and a roadmap for the first 180 days in office.
The 920-page blueprint of policy recommendations known as Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise is often called Project 2025 and is the Heritage Foundation’s ninth publication in a series that was first published in 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, took office.
Over the past 40 years, the organization has regularly published these Mandate for Leadership policy documents for conservative presidential administrations. In 2018, the Heritage Foundation boasted that President Donald Trump included nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations prescribed in its 2016 edition of Mandate for Leadership.
Trump has denied any involvement in the crafting of the current Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, however authors include former members of the Trump administration, including Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli, Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, and 140 others who served under Trump.
The authors of Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise recommend dramatically scaling down legal immigration, suspending the refugee program, restricting the ability to apply for asylum in the U.S., and detaining millions of undocumented immigrants and detaining them in sprawling camps on the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
Even though Trump has repeatedly denied any connection to Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and says he has not read it, according to a secret recording released in mid-August and reported by Forbes, Trump is familiar with the document. Forbes wrote, “One of the authors of Project 2025 claimed former President Donald Trump has ‘blessed’ the project and is ‘very supportive of what we do.’ ”
Russell Vought, a Project 2025 author, has said Trump was distancing himself from Project 2025 for political reasons, because the policies are so undemocratic.
Ruben Torres, Advocacy, Communications, and Policy Manager at Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition, said, “Policies like those proposed under Project 2025 could fundamentally reshape the immigrant experience in Maine, affecting everything from family unity and social stability to economic growth and community vibrancy. The impact on New Mainers would likely be profound, creating a harsher environment for legal immigration and making it more difficult for immigrant families to build new lives in the state.”
A central tenet of Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise also calls for consolidating executive power in the hands of the president, and then using that authority to make policies administratively without congressional approval. While many of these proposals would likely face legal challenges, Project 2025’s authors predict that conservative judges would uphold the legality of these policies.
“[Project 2025 is] about centralizing power, moving into dictatorial policies that are extremely dangerous to our democratic institutions,” said Faisal Khan, Executive Director of the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center.
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Khan described the Heritage Foundation as “a right-wing, conservative group. And Project 2025 is a xenophobic, racist policy that poses a threat to immigrants and refugees. It is unconstitutional, un-American, and against everything we believe and stand for.
What does Project 2025 say about immigration?
Project 2025 recommends implementing many drastic new policies that would severely restrict legal immigration, decimate the refugee admissions program, handicap the ability to apply for asylum in the U.S., and lead to detaining millions of undocumented immigrants in camps.
The policy recommends building many more detention centers and terminating the legal status of a half million so-called “Dreamers,” young adults who were illegally brought to the United States as children. The Dreamers were shielded from deportation and provided work permits by former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which Trump tried to end, but which was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court on procedural grounds.
Implementing the policies in Project 2025 would tighten restrictions on family-based immigration, visas, and asylum claims from people from war-torn countries. In addition, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise recommends pausing the intake of applications for any immigration benefit category whenever that category develops a backlog deemed “excessive.” The backlog of cases already pending in immigration courts more than tripled to 2 million between 2017 and 2023.
The Niskanen Center reports that at least 15 categories already have backlogs due to underfunding, and these include people seeking asylum, relatives of U.S. citizens and of green card holders, and 176,000 Ukrainian refugees with the Uniting for Ukraine program.
Other examples of benefit categories include victims of human trafficking and other crimes who cooperate with law enforcement, and those with Temporary Protected Status. If all active TPS designations were repealed, nearly 700,000 people who have fled their countries due to armed conflicts, environmental disasters, and other dangerous conditions would lose legal protections, according to the centrist-leaning Niskanen Center.
Other Project 2025 recommendations include requiring additional security protocols, interviews, more frequent submission of employment authorization documents, and other bureaucratic hurdles – all of which would add significantly more costs and administrative burden to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), causing longer wait times for processing visas, work permits, and asylum applications.
“Families would be left in limbo for extended periods, causing uncertainty and potentially deterring individuals from applying in the first place,” said Torres. “This would particularly affect immigrant families seeking stability and access to essential services in Maine.”
Project 2025 states that anyone whose immigration application is rejected must be forced to leave the country immediately until the backlogs are cleared. Currently, applicants are allowed to resubmit applications if they are rejected due to minor errors.
In addition, Project 2025 calls for limiting certain classes of nonimmigrants, such as spouses of employment-based visa holders, from receiving work authorizations, preventing them from earning an income in the U.S. Project 2025also bars U.S. citizens from qualifying for federal housing subsidies if they live with anyone who is not a citizen or legal permanent resident.
Project 2025 proposes to eliminate the refugee program by directing the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration staff to cease vetting refugees. It also proposes eliminating staff time for reviewing and processing renewal applications, which would increase the backlog, triggering pauses on intakes.
Project 2025 recommends that a new presidential administration cease approving visas for people from 13 countries categorized as “uncooperative” in receiving deported nationals. This category includes Burundi, China, Cuba, Eritrea, India, Iran, and Iraq.
Project 2025 directs the State Department to “eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations.” It also directs the government to phase out the non-agricultural H-2B guest worker visa program for people from other countries to fill temporary seasonal employment shortages in areas like hospitality and tourism. In Maine, the number of employers requesting H-2B visa positions increased from 2,507 in 2016 to 5,443 in 2023.
Portland City Councilor Pious Ali noted that eliminating TPS and Uniting for Ukraine would impact many people living in Maine who are originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Liberia, and Somalia. He said Project 2025 also would potentially separate immigrant families from any of their children born in the U.S.; these children already are citizens by virtue of having been born here.
“The broad swath of immigration language in [the Project 2025] document will impact every group of immigrants in Maine. Whether it’s through restrictions, the elimination of DACA, or the destruction of the Temporary Protective Status program, for Mainers, this will impact our everyday life, our schools, our communities, and our workforce. Families may be separated, kids will be removed from schools, resources that come down to us that we use to help immigrants into the workforce will all be restricted by the government,”
— Pious Ali
Detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants
One of the main stated goals of Project 2025 is to detain millions of undocumented immigrants in detention camps along the southern U.S. border and then deport them from the country. The policy would expand the use of what are called “expedited deportations” and allow for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids on “sensitive zones” like schools, hospitals, churches, and mosques, thus eliminating the ability of immigrants to have their day in court.
As the pro-immigration group America’s Voice reports, Project 2025 would create a “show-me-your-papers style mandate and require ICE to remove, arrest, and detain immigration violators anywhere in the country with or without a warrant.” It would also deputize local law enforcement to enforce immigration policies, use National Guard troops, and deploy the U.S. military to remove unauthorized migrants.
In addition to humanitarian concerns about Project 2025, Torres said implementation of its policies would harm vibrant local economies where immigrants have built their lives and cause massive labor shortages in agriculture, healthcare, and seafood processing.
“The rhetoric and potential implementation of these policies could create an environment of fear and uncertainty among immigrant communities in Maine. Families may worry about their legal status, fear deportation, or hesitate to seek help from government services, even if they are entitled to them,” Torres said.
Voters need to understand the ramifications of Project 2025 and make informed decisions in the voting booth, Ali said, adding, “It is important for those who can vote to go out and vote and make sure they are making the right decision because if the shoe falls on the wrong foot then we are all in trouble.”
