As US President-elect Donald Trump moves to fill key cabinet positions in his incoming administration, experts and rights groups in the United States have said his selections so far point towards a hardline approach to immigration.

Trump announced on Monday that Tom Homan – a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director – will serve as his “border czar”, while it was also reported that longtime adviser Stephen Miller will act as his deputy chief of staff for policy.

Homan and Miller were the architects of some of Trump’s most divisive immigration policies during his first term in office, including the separation of migrant and asylum-seeker families seeking protection at the US-Mexico border and the so-called Muslim ban.

With the Republican set to take office in January on a promise to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history”, advocates say the new appointments signal that Trump intends to try to follow through on that election campaign pledge.

“They’ve learned some things since the last time they were in power,” immigration lawyer Greg Siskind said of Miller and Homan.

“We’ll see whether they take a slower, more methodical approach to try and find ways around obstacles they ran into last time, or a bull-in-the-China-shop approach where they come in and just start breaking things,” he told Al Jazeera.

Longtime advisers

Cracking down on immigration – a topic that routinely ranked among Americans’ top concerns leading into the November 5 presidential vote – was a central plank of Trump’s successful re-election campaign.

The former president and his Republican allies spent months attacking Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for their handling of the issue, promising to “close” the US-Mexico border and deport millions of people.

In a statement announcing Homan’s appointment on Sunday, Trump said there was “nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders”. He added that as “border czar”, Homan would be in charge of all deportations of “illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin”.

Homan – who served as ICE director during Trump’s first term, which ran from 2017 to 2021 – has been a vocal proponent of the push to deport undocumented immigrants from the country.

“I shut my phone off Friday night because I couldn’t handle the phone calls, the texts, and emails from thousands of ICE agents, Border Patrol agents, excited about the rumour I’m coming back,” he said in an interview with FOX News on Monday.

“And more important than that, thousands of retired agents, retired military, that want to come in and volunteer to help this president secure the border and do the deportation operation.”

Homan previously served as director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement [File: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]

Miller, one of Trump’s longtime advisers who frequently uses incendiary, anti-migrant rhetoric, also has been a vocal proponent of mass deportations.

In a podcast interview last year, he said that National Guard units in various states could be deputised to help with the deportation push.

He also told The New York Times in November 2023 that the administration could set up “camps” to hold people pending their removal.

Arash Azizzada, an immigrant rights activist and founding co-director of the group Afghans For A Better Tomorrow, said Homan and Miller’s appointments show that Trump is committed to carrying out his “most cruel and racist policy promises”.

“We will fight back to protect our vulnerable new arrivals,” he told Al Jazeera in a text message.

“It is also why we have urged blue cities and states to refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials as they should serve as a bulwark against the deportation machine Trump is threatening,” Azizzada added, referring to areas under Democratic leadership.

During his FOX News interview, Homan said additional enforcement personnel could be deployed if states and municipalities refused to cooperate with the new Trump administration on its deportation plans.

“We’re going to do the job without you or with you,” he said.

Potential challenges

While Trump has said that immigration enforcement will only affect people who are in the US without documentation, activists have raised alarm over previous statements appearing to support even more radical policies.

During his campaign, Trump said that Haitians legally residing in the country under a federal law that grants them “temporary protected status” were actually “illegal immigrants as far as I’m concerned”. He said he would have them deported.

Trump has also said he will sign an executive order restricting birthright citizenship, a right established in the US Constitution that bestows citizenship on anyone born in the country regardless of the legal status of their parents.

However, Siskind, the immigration lawyer, said that such efforts would be sure to face strong legal challenges in court.

The same is likely true, he said, of other hardline measures such as proclaiming that people trying to enter the US at the border with Mexico amount to an “invasion”, to invoke emergency measures and expeditiously deport them using a law from the 18th Century.

“Their ambitions may run into reality,” he said.

‘Continue to fight’

Still, migration advocates across the US are preparing to face an expansive crackdown on the rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees under Trump’s incoming administration.

With election races in the US House of Representatives still being called, there is a strong possibility that Republicans could take control of both chambers of Congress after the party already secured a majority in the Senate.

That would give the Republican president-elect a strong position to push through his policy plans.

But while many organisations are expecting an onslaught once Trump returns to the White House, others have stressed that the task of defending immigrant rights has often been a lonely one under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

“While many believe we are in the darkest moment in our nation’s political history, let us remind you that we have been at this moment for quite some time. Immigrants are always the proverbial canary in the mine,” said Al Otro Lado, a group that works with migrants at the US-Mexico border.

“Under the current [Biden] administration, we saw them fight to keep the border closed under the Trump-era policy, Title 42. We saw them refuse to process refugees at US ports of entry, in violation of federal and international law,” the organisation said in a statement.

“It does not matter who is in power at this point. Al Otro Lado’s mission remains unchanged. We will continue to speak out, to expose injustice, and to fight as we did under Trump Round One.”