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In 2026, the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies could reshape who is allowed to enter the country and who can remain.
A series of court cases, executive actions and agency decisions are poised to redefine both legal pathways and the protections available to immigrants.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the administration’s effort to limit birthright citizenship. An expanded travel ban, tighter visa rules and the rollback of Temporary Protected Status protections are poised to narrow legal pathways for immigrants across the globe.
In the aftermath of the Jan. 7 shooting of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, questions about the state of democracy have jumped to the fore of conversation. Some leaders, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in an editorial for The New York Times, have called for local and state leadership to step forward in defense of civil rights.
The nationwide impacts have propelled legislatures, including Massachusetts’, to debate how far states should go to protect immigrant communities from federal enforcement. Together, these developments will shape a consequential year for U.S. immigration policy.
Birthright citizenship and the Supreme Court
In early December, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to end birthright citizenship for millions of children born in the United States to non-citizen parents. Arguments are expected in spring 2026, with a decision likely by late June or early July.
Birthright citizenship, known as jus soli, has long been understood as a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment and was affirmed by the Supreme Court more than a century ago. That long-standing interpretation is at the heart of the legal and political fight now unfolding.
“If they can, with the markings of a pen in an executive order, eradicate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, folks better be aware that they can do the same with every other right that they take for granted.”
— Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell
A coalition of 18 Democratic attorneys general and civil rights groups sued the administration in U.S. District Court over Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order. In an interview with The Light in April, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, a party in the lawsuit, said she viewed the order as part of a broader effort to undermine the Constitution.
“If they can, with the markings of a pen in an executive order, eradicate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, folks better be aware that they can do the same with every other right that they take for granted,” Campbell said.
Last June, the Supreme Court ruled that district court judges had exceeded their authority by issuing nationwide injunctions blocking the order. Within hours, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a new lawsuit challenging it.
“There’s going to be a real divide in the United States between some of the states that are challenging this on a nationwide basis,” said Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center in New Bedford. “In Massachusetts, or in New England in general, there’s going to be an ongoing resistance to that.”
Estimates from the Migration Policy Institute and Penn State’s Population Research Institute show that ending birthright citizenship for U.S. born children of unauthorized or temporary immigrants would increase the unauthorized population by an average of about 255,000 children born each year without U.S. citizenship over the next 50 years.
Williams said a limitation on birthright citizenship would be a significant loss for a community like New Bedford.
“It’s so much an anathema to our values as a commonwealth, as a community, and as a city,” Williams said. “I do think that it could have had the impact of reshaping local communities and forcing parts of the community further into the shadows.”
Expanded travel ban and visa restrictions
In December, the Trump administration announced a new executive order expanding its travel ban, bringing to 39 the number of countries whose citizens face full or partial restrictions on entering the United States. Starting Jan. 1, the nationals are barred from obtaining visas abroad or from securing or changing their immigration status from within the country.
According to the American Immigration Council, the new restrictions would block roughly one in five people seeking to immigrate legally to the United States.
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Nineteen countries are now subject to a full travel ban, while 20 others face partial restrictions that bar their citizens from obtaining immigrant visas as well as tourist, student and exchange-visitor visas.
Because the travel ban applies to entry, it does not immediately affect people already in the United States, but it can create problems when they try to obtain or change their immigration status from within the country.
When a travel ban imposed in June added visa restrictions affecting the first 19 countries of the current list, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services halted the processing of visa petitions, green card applications and citizenship oath ceremonies.
With the December travel ban adding 20 more countries, nationals of 39 countries are now unable to obtain immigration status, whether applying from abroad or from within the United States.
Temporary protected status ending for 12 countries, including Haiti
The administration has scaled back humanitarian programs, including Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which grants temporary legal status to nationals of countries where return is unsafe. In 2025, the administration moved to end TPS protections for more than one million people from eight countries: Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria and, most recently, Venezuela.
TPS is granted for up to 18 months at a time, with the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security required to decide at least 60 days before expiration whether to extend or end a designation based on conditions in the country. As of December 2025, 12 countries remained designated for TPS, and all are scheduled to expire in 2026, including Haiti, whose designation is set to end on Feb. 3, 2026.
A UNICEF report released in October found that Haiti faces a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis, with 3.3 million children in need of assistance and the number displaced by violence nearly doubling over the past year.
“My brain can’t even wrap around what’s going to happen when there is no protective status,” said Soraya DosSantos, the founder of Sacred Birthing Village in New Bedford, who works with mothers from many backgrounds, including Haitians and Venezuelans, some of whom hold TPS. “February is around the corner, but at the same time is so distant because they’re just trying to still get by one day at a time.”
Despite the narrow pathways to permanent residency under TPS, many families have been able to settle in and find work in the meantime. Now, with those protections set to expire, they are weighing the possibility of moving to countries such as Canada or Brazil, DosSantos said.
For the Haitian families she works with, returning to Haiti is not an option.
“It would be the most unsafe, the deadliest thing they could do,” she said. “For all of them, the first thing they’re thinking about is their children.”
For nine other countries, including El Salvador and Ukraine, the Trump administration has not moved to end TPS ahead of its scheduled expiration. Those designations are set to end in September and October 2026, respectively.
On Beacon Hill
Advocates turned to Beacon Hill in 2025, hoping state lawmakers could offer some protection as the federal government’s offensive against immigrant communities continued.
“We in Massachusetts cannot control the federal government and cannot control the federal government’s enforcement actions,” said Gavi Wolfe, the legislative director of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But we can separate ourselves from them.”
Among the bills that garnered early attention from advocates and detractors alike was H.4684, which would require all law enforcement officers, including federal agents, to remove face coverings when interacting with the public. The proposal follows in the footsteps of a California law recently signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in response to a series of ICE operations involving masked agents violently arresting immigrants across the state.
But that is not where advocates’ eyes are now.
“We’re really focused on the issue of state actors and what our state officials and law enforcement agencies are doing,” Wolfe said. “Our primary objective is to make sure that state and local government entities are not lending a hand to ICE.”
Their main focus on Beacon Hill is H.2580, known as the Safe Communities Act, which would further limit local and state level enforcement cooperation with ICE.
In November, hundreds of activists descended upon Beacon Hill from across Massachusetts to testify in favor of the bill before the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security. Currently, the 2017 Lunn decision by Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court prevents state and local agencies from holding immigrants due to a civil detainer issued by ICE. That is the only statewide limit on cooperation with the agency. Even so, tensions between federal immigration agents and sheriffs are already evident.
Wolfe said a statute prohibiting cooperation with ICE would signal to the world the commonwealth’s values.
“When we look at our peer states that share our values, like New Jersey, California, Delaware, Washington, Illinois, they’ve made clear their values by saying 1000%, ‘We’re not going to engage with ICE,’” Wolfe said.
“We’re not going to assist in the deportation of our residents: That’s a statement of values that we don’t have in our statute,” Wolfe continued, “and there’s nothing in state law that prevents state law enforcement from helping ICE.”
Massachusetts allocated $5 million from the fiscal 2026 state budget to the Office for Refugees and Immigrants for immigrant legal defense. Immigrants are 55% more likely to have a positive outcome in immigration court if they have legal representation, so S.1127, which would create a permanent immigrant legal defense fund, is another bill advocates have their eyes on.
Wolfe said that advocates are optimistic about the prospects for their priorities on Beacon Hill this year.
“The federal government is on the attack, brutalizing people on the streets, taking away lawful status in the country,” Wolfe said. “That’s not something our state should be a party to in any fashion.”
Contact Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org. Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org.