Trump released a new GOP platform. How Agenda 47 could affect immigration policies in GA

After weeks of contentious debate, former President Donald Trump spoke out against the controversial Project 2025 plan organized by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.

He instead propped up his own platform called Agenda 47, an outline of 20 goals he promises to accomplish if he wins the upcoming election and takes office as the 47th U.S. president.

Trump’s platform establishes his position on highly contested issues like taxation, manufacturing and immigration. Policies in these areas can vastly change the lives of Georgians if Trump has the opportunity to implement them next year.

Three of Trump’s 20 platform points involve illegal immigration and its potential offshoots, like the proliferation of gang violence and cartel presence in the U.S.

A 2019 study from the Migration Policy Institute identified nearly 340,000 illegal immigrants in Georgia, accounting for just over 3% of the state’s population.

The majority of those immigrants were in the Atlanta metropolitan area, but the study also found small pockets in cities like Columbus, Macon and Athens.

Many of Trump’s immigration policies, like strengthening the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department and securing the border from drug traffic, are mirrored by legislation from Sen. Jon Ossoff. He has introduced or supported three significant bills in the last two years that align with Trump’s stated mission.

In September 2023, Ossoff became the fourth cosponsor of the Securing America’s Ports of Entry Act. The bill, if passed, would compel the Customs and Border Protection department to hire and train at least 600 officers every year until staffing “equals and sustains the requirements identified each year.”

The Ports of Entry Act hasn’t passed, but its goal may be achieved if Trump enters office. The first point of his immigration agenda, titled “Secure the Border,” promises that his administration will “shift massive portions of Federal Law Enforcement to Immigration Enforcement.” In the same section, Trump proposes moving “thousands of Troops currently stationed overseas” to the southern border of the U.S.

As of March 2024, nearly 170,000 active-duty military personnel were stationed or deployed abroad. Almost 30% of those soldiers are in the Army, coming from large bases like Fort Moore.

If Trump takes office in November and carries out his border plans, the majority of those soldiers could be routed to the southernmost points of Texas, Arizona and California instead of posts across the Middle East and north Africa.

Fentanyl and opioids in Columbus

Trump’s platform and local legislation also emphasize the significance of advancing technology at the border. Ossoff proposed and sponsored several pieces of legislation, including the Border Enforcement, Security, and Trade Facilitation Act of 2023, to give CBP access to more fentanyl scanners.

“There are more than enough Democratic Senators ready and willing to pass a strong bipartisan border security bill… that would hire urgently needed border patrol officers and take the fight to drug cartels flooding our communities with fentanyl,” he said in a May Senate address. “The threat of terrorism associated with unlawful entry at the southern border is real. It is pressing.”

Opioids have presented a national and local health problem for years. Deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids increased by more than 700% between 2015 and 2022 in the U.S., and they doubled between 2020 and 2021 in Georgia.

Muscogee County Coroner Buddy Brian said fentanyl-related deaths are becoming more common in Columbus.

“We have about (48 to 60) accidental overdoses every year,” he said. “There’s a lot of marijuana coming in laced with fentanyl.”

Brian said he’d seen around a dozen deaths caused by fentanyl in the past year, and he expected that number to increase as the drug’s usage grows.

Fentanyl has also been at the forefront of crime in Columbus and Macon, with police operations resulting in dozens of kilos of fentanyl seized.

The origin of specific batches of fentanyl in Georgia is hard to track, but the Drug Enforcement Administration identified Mexico and China as the two primary source countries for illicit fentanyl entering the U.S.

Several lawmakers have said Mexico’s fentanyl production is connected to immigrants illegally crossing the southern border, but an NPR report said the drug is seized far more often at legal ports of entry than on illegal crossing routes.

Understaffed at Border Patrol

International drug smuggling poses a problem to public health in the U.S., but Joseph Cuffari, the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, said CBP is unprepared for the “intensifying conditions at the southwest border.”

The agency has seized over 400,000 pounds of drugs in the last eight months, with more than half coming from the southwest border. Overall seizures across the country are lower than in previous years, but intercepted fentanyl shipments have increased by nearly 500%.

“Border Patrol stations and ports of entry are severely understaffed,” he said. “They’re often running with a ‘skeleton crew’ to process migrants.”

Cuffari said there is a “consistently high volume of migrant encounters,” which includes interactions between CBP officers and migrants at ports of entry, stations and detention centers.

“Sometimes, ports of entry rely on overtime from officers to compensate for understaffing,” he said. “It just isn’t sustainable. We need more officers at the border.”

A spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin said the center has sufficient staffing for the number of migrant interactions.

According to some lawmakers, like state Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, one of Georgia’s biggest immigration problems lies with cities and counties that don’t comply with federal immigration agencies.

Georgia has outlawed sanctuary policies since 2009, and lawmakers continue to write bills like HB301 to enforce the state’s rules. HB301, which passed with support from Robertson and three other Republicans in a 4-1 vote, punishes local governments that enact sanctuary policies by revoking their eligibility for state and federal funding and allowing Gov. Kemp to suspend members of governing authorities like mayors.

Trump’s Agenda 47 places significant emphasis on border and immigration control, a stance the former president has maintained since his initial efforts in 2017 to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The ideas in his platform, if carried out, could partner with state and local legislation to bring significant changes to Georgia.

This story was originally published August 1, 2024 at 12:34 PM.