The broad leveraging of the Border Patrol “certainly at this scale, and this scope, is unprecedented,” says Jennifer Chacón, a law professor at Stanford Law School.

“We are probably on the cusp of seeing a lot of unprecedented enforcement interventions,” particularly with the massive funding boost to immigration agencies, says Professor Chacón. ICE and the Border Patrol “will simply be present in more places, and have more people who can be deployed for more purposes, within the interior.”